Those that call the Six Day War a disaster or a Pyrrhic victory are grossly
mistaken, because they overlook the fact that Israel wasn't destroyed,
historian Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

In an interview on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of war on
June 5, 1967, Oren said his research of documents in Arab countries had
revealed clearly that the Arabs had planned to destroy Israel.

Although this seems obvious to Israel sympathizers who hold to the
traditional story of the Arabs' responisbility for the outbreak of war, the
intervening decades have seen the promulgation of a myth that Israel was not
really in danger.

"The biggest myth going is that somehow there was not a real and immediate
Arab threat, that somehow Israel could have negotiated itself outside the
crisis of 1967, and that it wasn't facing an existential threat, or facing
any threat at all," said Oren, who is a senior fellow at the Adelson
Institute for Strategic Studies at Jerusalem's Shalem Center and author of
Six Days of War: June 1967. He noted that this was the premise of Tom
Segev's book, 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle
East. "What's remarkable is that all the people alleging this - not one of
them is working from Arabic sources. It's quite extraordinary when you think
about it. It's almost as if Israel were living in a universe by itself. It's
a deeply solipsistic approach to Middle East history."

What's behind the myth, Oren argued, is "a more pervasive, ongoing effort to
show that Israel bears the bulk, if not the sole responsibility, for decades
of conflict in the Arab world, and that the Arabs are the aggrieved party.

"It's an attempt to show that Israel basically planned the Six Day War in
advance, knowing that it was going to expand territorially. My position is
that it was just the opposite. Israel was taken aback by the crisis,
unprepared for it and panicked, believing it faced a true existential
threat, and did not plan to expand territory.

"It did everything it could to keep Jordan and Syria out of the war. My
reading of the Arabic documents show that the Arabs had real plans to attack
and destroy the State of Israel."

Oren said Israel's strategic relationship with the US began with the war.

"The United States, which previously regarded Israel as a friendly country
but one that impaired its relations with the Arab world, suddenly realized
that the Jewish state was in fact a regional superpower," he said. "The US
subsequently forged an alliance with Israel that has remained ever since."
The first person to recognize that the war had dramatically changed the
geopolitical balance in the Middle East, according to Oren, was US president
Lyndon Johnson, who initiated a peace plan later embodied in UN Security
Council Resolution 242.

"You can actually see 242 coming out of Johnson's head on June 5, 1967,
including the notion that Israel would not have to return to the 1967
borders," Oren said. "Johnson is saying that particularly the West Bank
border is not a defensible border; it's only eight miles across to the sea,
and Israel should not have to go back to that border."

The war, Oren said, marked "the emergence for the first time of a US-Israel
strategic relationship, as the Johnson administration wakes up on June 12,
1967, and says, 'Oh my God, we've got a regional superpower on our hands. We
can't afford not to have it as an ally.'"

Oren acknowledged that the Six Day War also led to the establishment of
"controversial settlements" in the West Bank and Gaza, to the ongoing
conflict over Jerusalem and the relentless debate over Palestinian
statehood.

"And yet it was also the 1967 war that inaugurated the peace process," he
said. "UN Resolution 242, enacted in its wake, remains the cornerstone of
all negotiations and created the conditions for Palestinian self-rule. The
current Arab League peace plan calls for 'full Israeli withdrawal' to the
June 4, 1967, lines, and the 'road map' plan endorsed by the United States
and much of the international community provides for the emergence of a
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

"None of this would be possible if the West Bank and Gaza were still
occupied by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, as they were in 1967, and if the
Arab world were still consumed with how best to make war, rather than peace,
with Israel."

The war also "vastly enhanced" Israel's relationship with Jewish communities
abroad, Oren said.

"Before the war, some of the leading Jewish organizations in the US were
reserved, if not distant, in their relationship with Israel," he said. "But
as Arab armies massed on Israel's borders, Diaspora Jews confronted the
possibility of witnessing a second Holocaust within a single generation, and
later reveled in the joy of Israel's success.

"Many were inspired by the reunification of the State of Israel with the
biblical Land of Israel, with Bethlehem, Hebron and above all, Jerusalem.

"Contributions poured into Israel, enabling it to strengthen its economy and
its ability to absorb new immigrants, and American Jewish organizations
lobbied for its defense."

In the war itself, Oren said, Israel had high casualty rates, losing more
than 700 soldiers, and "what is widely unknown is that we lost about 20
percent of our planes.

"It was not in any way a picnic, not a walkover, particularly not on the
Jordanian-Syrian front," he said. "The territorial outcomes of the war were
dramatic in the extreme; Israel almost quadrupled its territorial size."
Arab casualty rates are difficult to gauge, Oren said, but there were
probably more than 15,000 dead and 10,000 captured, with about $2 billion of
Soviet equipment destroyed on the field of battle.

As a quirky aside, Oren also noted that the Six Day War actually lasted
seven days.

"Mount Hermon was actually taken on the seventh day of the Six Day War," he
said.

In this dark portrait, Japan is portrayed as a victim of its own success.

By RICHARD J. SAMUELS

[Selected Extracts Only]

DOGS AND DEMONS
Tales From the Dark Side of Japan.
By Alex Kerr.
432 pp. New York:

Alex Kerr has given us a remarkable portrait of modern Japan, virtually no part
of which is flattering. As his subtitle indicates, he goes out of his way to
catalog the dysfunctions that dominate an unhappy and declining country. ''Dogs
and Demons'' (from an inaccessible Chinese metaphor) will not be welcomed in the
polite company of those who prefer to powder Japan's happy face.

Kerr, the author of ''Lost Japan'' and a longtime resident of Japan, confidently
cuts a broad swath across the worlds of architecture, education, politics,
cinema, business and the environment to make the case that Japan has fallen
victim to its own success. The problem is that form (kata) dominates function
and purpose (jitsu) in every nook and cranny of Japanese life. What is left is
empty: memorization without learning, design without context, building without
purpose, information without knowledge, finance without the production of value.
Bombast has overwhelmed understatement, and all is pure manga -- comic-strip
fantasy, trashy, cheap and shiny.

Kerr has a keen eye for paradox. Japan is today a high-tech economy that lacks
the know-how to test for toxic waste, a ''postindustrial country with
preindustrial goals.'' It is an industrial battleship on faulty autopilot. But
it gets worse. Kerr's Japan is a land of prevarication: the government tells
children that plutonium is safe to drink. It is a land of duplicity: retired
government officials skim profits from public-works spending. It is a land of
incompetence: wooden ladles and plastic buckets are used to clean up after
nuclear disasters and oil spills. It is a land of collusion: industry and
government join to hide the poisoning of innocent citizens. It is a land of
widespread intimidation: students are afraid to subscribe to environmental
magazines for fear that it will hurt their career chances. And it is a land
without transparency: in response to demands for audits, officials torch public
records with impunity and police departments develop training materials to teach
officers how to cover up scandals.

As with most polemics, Kerr's is riddled with hyperbole. He force-feeds us a
cartoon version of how Japan is governed -- by ''near dictatorial'' bureaucrats
-- when, in fact, the system goes forward because politicians win re-election
for delivering concrete goodies: roads, schools, community centers, hospitals.
If Japan is a nation gripped by a ''boondoggle fever,'' that fever is one
voluntarily induced and willingly endured.

Kerr also overstates the dysfunctions. Japan still has a lower crime rate, a
healthier diet, cleaner city streets, longer life expectancy, better mass
transit, higher literacy and more equitable income distribution than virtually
any other industrial nation. And the Japanese government has already begun to
rectify its environmental insouciance in ways Kerr dismisses as inconceivable.

For an interesting discussion of Japan including the possibility that they may
be of Hebrew origin
see:

Mendip was an important centre of production. "Most probably the Romans set the
native population to work in the mines," says Gough, "or used the labour of
slaves and prisoners-of-war, or condemned prisoners. The mines were well known
to be the destiny of enemies captured in war...."

1. Guysen Israel
News Extracts
From: <webmaster@guysen.com>
2007-06-07 , 21 Sivan 5767
(a) Israel Provides Britain with Intelligence Equipment
10:58 U-Tacs, the British subsidiary of the Israeli company Elbit Systems, has
won $110 million contract to provide intelligence equipment to the British army.
It will supply 450 drones and train British officers in their use and
maintenance. The UAV (pilotless airplanes) sold are equipped with the Istar
system (? Intelligence, Surveillance, Target acquisition, Reconnaissance ?). (Guysen.Isra
l.News)

(b) Former Israeli Leader Attacks Jewish Zionist State
09:45 ''To define the State of Israel as a Jewish State, is the key to its end.
A Jewish state is explosive", Avraham Burg, former president of the Knesset and
of the Jewish Agency, made these comments in an interview that appeared in a
supplement of Haaretz, on the occasion of the publication of his book "Defeating
Hitler". He said that he is in favor of the annulment of the Jewish status of
the State of Israel, of abrogating the Law of Return and he called on anyone who
can to obtain a foreign passport. He also said that he defines himself as a
"citizen of the world, then a Jew and finally an Israeli". In his book he
compares Israel to Germany on the eve of the rise of Nazism. (Guysen.Isra l.News)

Extracts Only
JERUSALEM ? "Since the Six-Day War the Arab world has been trying to get us off
the mountains of Judea and Samaria, but as long as we are on this mountain, we
are unbeatable," Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday.

Speaking at a conference held in the capital by the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs (JCPA) to mark the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, Netanyahu said
the war "was a turning point in which we went from a fetal and fragile country
whose existence was questionable to a state which cannot be defeated."

The conference was dedicated to United Nations Resolution 242, which was adopted
five months after the war and outlined guidelines for a peaceful solution in the
Middle East.

"This possibility [for peace] was on the agenda," said Netanyahu. "The fact that
we were unbeatable made us move from war to peace. It was a necessary condition
in causing parts of the Arab world to recognize the State of Israel and its
right to exist.

"Today the peace process is in retreat following the unilateral withdrawal from
Lebanon, the pullout from Gaza and the Second Lebanon War.

"Today not only our enemies, but also our friends, question the notion that we
are unbeatable. This moves us away from peace and brings us closer to war. The
Six-Day War was aimed at removing the question mark over our existence and
paving the road to peace.
"All those who lament the terrible thing that happened to us during the Six-Day
War are wrong, because something wonderful happened to us. Our weakness today is
that we are not claiming our rights. If we fail to fight for our rights, they
will disappear. This is the weakness of our policy."

In response to a question from the audience, Netanyahu said that Israel must not
leave the Golan Heights.
"If we leave the Golan Heights we will get a piece of paper but not a defendable
border." (Ynetnews)

AP - China has echoed concerns raised by Russia over a US plan for a
missile defence shield in Europe, saying such a system could trigger an
arms race.

The White House plans to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and
interceptor missiles in Poland - two Eastern European countries that
were in the Soviet orbit during the Cold War era.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the plan had "aroused
great concern and attention."

"China believes that the impact of a missile defence system on strategic
defence and stability is not conducive to mutual trust of major nations
and regional security," she said. "It may also give rise to a
proliferation problem."

Over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow
could take "retaliatory steps" including aiming nuclear weapons at US
military bases in Europe if the shield was realised.

Moscow believes the shield in Eastern Europe is meant for Russia, and
says it has no choice but to boost its own military potential in response.

The US says the network is meant to protect NATO allies against a
missile launch from Iran.

Once Cold War rivals for the allegiances of the socialist world, China
and Russia improved relations dramatically in the 1990s and forged what
they call a "strategic partnership."

2.Archaeology:
Brit-Am Version of Explorator
10.7
From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>

================================================================
explorator 10.7 June 10, 2007
================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
Assorted Bronze Age finds during construction of a bypass in
Cornwall:

In the face of Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons and predictions that
war with Syria is on the horizon, Israel strengthened its foothold in space
pre-dawn Monday and successfully launched a spy satellite, which defense
officials said granted the IDF unprecedented operational capabilities.

The satellite, called Ofek 7, was launched from the Palmahim Air Force Base
and successfully reached orbit. Officials said however that it would take
several days to test the satellite's systems before it would be declared
operational. The satellite was launched atop a Shavit missile.

The successful launch came as a great relief for the defense establishment
and particularly Israel Aerospace Industries, lead contractor of the Ofek
project. In September 2004, Israel failed to successfully launch the Ofek 6,
which in its third boost stage plummeted to the sea. At the time, despite
the disappointment, the Defense Ministry continued ahead with its
development of the Ofek 7.

Weighing 300 kilograms, the Ofek 7 will orbit earth from up to 600
kilometers in space. It has a four-year lifespan and will communicate its
images via downlink with an IAI-run ground station.

Defense officials said that the launching of the satellite was part of the
MOD's multi-year work plan but was also in line with the defense
establishment's operational needs." Israel has traditionally launched a new
satellite once every two-and-a-half years staring in the late 1980s.

While refusing to divulge the performance levels of the new satellite,
defense officials said that it was by far the most advanced satellite Israel
has launched into space. Officials said that it was superior to the Eros B
satellite - launched in April 2006 - which has the ability to spot images on
the ground as small as 70 centimeters. The officials refused to divulge what
made it superior
"With this launch we have improved Israel's operational capabilities by
dozens of percent, said Brig.-Gen. Haim Eshet, director of Space
Programming at the MOD's Research and Development Directorate (MAFAT).
This is due to the improvements made to the satellite and also since we now
have
better coverage in the skies.
In addition to the Eros B - a civilian-owned satellite used by the MOD on a
contract basis - Israel currently operates the Ofek 5 spy satellite,
successfully launched in May 2002.

It was supposed to have had a four-year life span, but its producers boast
that it is still functioning and continues to produce high-resolution
pictures from space. Its telescopic camera was designed by Elbit Systems and
has variable direction capability.

The Ofek 5 satellite is in an elliptical orbit that reportedly takes it over
Iran, Iraq, and Syria once every 90 minutes.

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Saudi Arabia has been funneling hundreds of millions of
dollars to establish Wahabi mosques and schools in North Africa.
Officials said Saudi princes and those close to the ruling family have been
pouring money into the construction of mosques, schools and charities in
such countries as Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. They said the Saudi
funding, joined by those in other Gulf Cooperation Council states, was
encouraged by the government in Riyad and meant to increase the kingdom's
influence in North Africa.

"Saudi foreign policy is primarily the promotion of the Wahabi doctrine," an
official said. "It's problematic because the path from Wahabi doctrine to Al
Qaida philosophy is quite short."

Officials said the United States has been monitoring the flow of funds, but
has not relayed any protest to Saudi Arabia or other GCC states. They said
the Gulf funds aimed to establish a Wahabi network in North Africa that
would train Muslim clerics and teachers.
--------------
NOTE: The above is not the full item.
This service contains only a small portion of the information produced daily
by Middle East Newsline. For a subscription to the full service, please
contact Middle East Newsline at:
editor@menewsline.com for further details.

2. DennisPrager:
From JFK
to 9/11: Why People Believe in Conspiracies
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0607/prager061207.php3

3. Yair Davidiy:
More Reasons Why People Believe in Conspiracies
a. Real Cases of Collusion, Vested Interests, and a partial Consensus amongst
the Influential. Mass Marketing Does Work.
b. Paranoia: Many people want to believe things are worse than they are
and that little hope is left.
c. Conspiracy Theories give a feeling of Empowerment to those dissatisfied with
the situation
and personally disappointed that they cannot change it.
d. Knowledge: Conspiracy Theories frequently mention facts and half-truths that
are can be important
or at least are often of some interest value
but other wise are not generally known or hard to come by.
e. Revolt Against Media Manipulation.
The Establishment Media often comes across as arrogant, dogmatic, false, and
manipulative.
Adherence to Conspiracy Theories is going in the opposite direct
and experienced as a kind of protest.

4. Conspirational
Behavior
There is no Conspiracy.
There is Conspirational Behavior.
This when misrepresented gives the impression of Conspiracy.
Examples of such Behavior:
Governmental "think" tank groups in the US and Europe deciding that Peace in the
Middle East should be
encouraged through support of "positive" elements in Israel.
This largely means giving money, advice, and instruction to left-wing
secularists
in positions of influence.
There is a suspicion that it borders on the criminal since it leads to "buying"
people
and also to preparing "cases" against prominent personalities to expose them
if they do not toe the line, i.e. blackmail and manipulation of the legal
system.

Such intervention in the affairs of another [usually more dependent] country is
apparently accepted foreign policy.

Within the nation there exist business and "academic" groups that apply the same
principles
to their own government.

This looks like Conspiracy Theory but it is not since there is no central group
deciding matters
but rather a "consensus" that emerges amongst elites groupings.

Mass Marketing and the Psychology of Propaganda also come into play.
To a certain degree a not insignificant proportion of the public can be
manipulated
with reasonable precision through the Media stressing defined associations.

There is also subliminal suggestiveness, e.g.
One can flash a picture of a product across a screen in a Movie Theater at high
speed that is not normally consciously
noticed or play a background recording advertising the product in a Supermarket
at a frequency that is inaudible to the
human ear at a conscious level to a hundred people.
The result in both cases will be more sales of the product in question and the
audience will not even be aware it was exposed to an advertising message!
The above two examples would be considered unethical and possibly illegal
but there are other ways to obtain the same effect.

To withdraw from the Golan, a mere 45 kilometers from Damascus, is to abandon
the one strategic asset that has deterred Syria from attacking Israel in 34
years.

To grasp the nature of Syrian barbarism, let me take you back to a ceremony
which that regime celebrated on the tenth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. I
watched that ceremony on Israel television, clips of which should now be shown
throughout Israel.

In that ceremony – and now I turn to its description in the October 21, 1983
issue of the Jerusalem Post Magazine – $B!H (BSyrian militia trainees [male and
female] put on a show for Syrian president Hafez Assad. Martial music reached a
crescendo as Syrian teenage girls suddenly bit into live snakes [some four or
five feet long], repeatedly tearing off flesh and spitting it out as blood ran
down their chins. As Assad applauded, the girls then attached the snakes to
sticks and grilled them over fire, eating them triumphantly. Others [militiamen]
then proceeded to strangle puppies and drink their blood.

The reader can judge for himself what the snakes, the puppies, and the blood
represent.

Micronesian Academics Boycott British Academics over Academic Boycott of Israel
by Kevin Ray
Polynesians to follow with boycott of yet to be determined country.

A tiny island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has come to the defense
of the State of Israel yet again over the recent boycott of its academics by the
British University and College Union. The Union of Micronesian Academics, which
consists of three members - two in "Iron Crafting," and one in "Irrigation
Sciences," claim that the British Boycott is counter-productive.

"Israeli academics have been at the forefront, making discoveries in medicine,
environmental sciences, and computer technologies, " said union representative
Samik Lenosid. "And what have the British given us? Besides for Monty Python and
Mr. Bean, I am not sure. For that, we are boycotting the British."

The Micronesians are not alone in voicing criticism about the British boycott.
Israel is even receiving support from the most unlikely of places. Sari
Nusseibeh, president of the Palestinian al-Quds University located in East
Jerusalem said, "Israeli Academics have been amongst the most progressive and
peace minded people around the world. Boycotting these people would be counter
to the principles of academic freedom and hurt the cause of peace in the Middle
East."

British University and College Union head Paul Mackney responded, "Palestinian
academics do not know what they want. This boycott is really quite good for
them." To which Mr. Nusseibeh retorted, "No it's not." Mackney was reported to
have responded, "Yes it is."

Micronesia's support for the Jewish state is not new. They consider themselves
stalwart supporters, rarely voting against Israel in the United Nations. When
asked why, Micronesian Vice President Alik L. Alik explained, "Israel is the
only free and open democracy in a sea of totalitarian neighbors, yet they still
manage to lead the world in so many crucial endeavors. That and... we love the
mud from the Dead Sea. It keeps our skin very smooth."

Micronesia doesn't just vote with Israel on the United Nations floor, they are
also known to stand up for the Holy Land in the sub-committee groups where much
of the anti-Israel rhetoric takes place. Reportedly, after hearing Libya and
Uzbekistan speak derogatorily about Israel, Micronesia piped up and said, "Oh no
you didn't! I know you didn't just say that about Israel, because if you did,
you'd be getting a whole lot of Micronesian hurt coming your way and I know you
don't want that."

When asked what their end goal was, the Micronesians in charge of the boycott
boycott responded, "We would like the nations of the world to follow our lead
and choose at least one nation to boycott. If we are lucky, in no time at all we
will all be boycotting each other, and within a few years, academic research
will only be done on Wikipedia."

Author Biography:
Kevin Ray teaches high school physical education. On weekends he plays goal
keeper for his soccer team the Hamber Griffins.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

This article can also be read at:
http://www.aish. com
_Academics_over_ Academic_ Boycott_of_ Israel.asp

David Cameron, responding to questions at the annual luncheon of
the Conservative Friends of Israel, said the academic boycott was
completely uncalled for and that attacks against Israel often
slid into anti-Semitism, Ha'aretz reported.

"If by Zionist you mean that the Jews have the right to a
homeland in Israel and the right to a country then I am a
Zionist," the Tory leader said.

================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST
================================================================
A Second Temple Jewish settlement found between Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv:

http://www.nzarchaeology.org/netsubnews.htm
================================================================
NORTH AMERICA
================================================================
On the DNA front, efforts will be made to locate descendents of
the Lost Colony:

There is one you left out. Sometimes they are more than theory.
Sometimes they are true. We need to be careful not to dismiss
just because a theory seems implausible. After all the nature of a
true conspiracy is that conspirators would attempt to make
evidence seem implausible. At least that's my theory!
Ephraiyim

This link in your current email would seem to imply that you believe that
there are culture-shaping groups whose unaccredited influence should be
highlighted and recognized, such as the Ford Foundation. You claim not to be
a conspiracy theorist. Still, this bracketed comment about the Ford
foundation is intriguing, no? If my inference is wrong I apologize.

I believe and hope that G-d is permitting this growing darkness in the world
to bring about a most astonishing event. This event being the recovery of
Israel from the nations.

Regards,
Terry McCann

Replies:
(a) There is no "Conspiracy Theory" in the sense the Conspiracy Freaks use the
term.
There is manipulation of the public, media, deceit, pressure groups, money and
sectional interests, ideological consensus,
etc. In short there exist numerous elements that interfere with how things
should be run. They go against the principles of truth,
free will, and the public good which principles we are mislead to believe are paramount or should be.
"Conspiracy Theory" in the sense used by the Conspiracy Freaks is the claim that there
exists a central homogeneous secret self-perpetuating group
that concentrates all the Manipulative or Conspirational elements in its hands.
This does not exist.
It is a myth.
It is untrue and harmful and frequently exploited by malicious elements for
nefarious purposes.
In short it seeks to create its own monster.

(b) Conspirational or Manipulative personalities are constantly active and
always have been but this does NOT justify the "Conspiracy Theory" which is false.

The Ford Foundation has a history of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli activity.
It helps fund the "Open House" Gay Rights organization that is organizing
the planned march of perverts through the streets of Jerusalem.
The Ford Foundation also gives money to Aztlan the anti-American Mexican racist group.
See also:
Jerusalem-News"-573
http://www.britam.org/jerusalem/jerusalem571to600.html#anti#2. The
anti-Israelite Nazi Agenda of the Ford Foundation

Organizations with money as well as foreign governments for their own reasons
interfere in the affairs of Israel.
A few years ago an EU document was released admitting contributions to a "religious" free-thinking organization. The admitted (according to the
document) purpose of the contributions was to weaken believe in the Bible amongst national
religious Jews and consequently diminish their wish to retain the Land of Israel in Jewish
possession.

For decades Saudi Arabia has been quietly locating anti-Semitic politicians and
media people (including some in Time magazine) in order to fund and encourage them.
The oil companies have been encouraging and through their influence almost
enforcing a placatory approach towards muslim extremists, downgrading ecological appreciation and alternate
energy research etc.
All this (and there is much much more) however is not conspiracy but rather
manipulation.
It may be termed "conspirational behavior",
see:

It should be noted that believers in Conspiracy Theories
adhere to a false doctrine.
They also believe and often propagate false witness against specific personages.
Without a single shred of real evidence it is not unusual for Conspiracy Freaks
to accuse important people of the most horrible deeds and intentions.
As we have pointed out frequently, Conspiracy Freaks also tell lies about Judah and about Israelite nations such as the UK and the USA.
Conspiracy Freaks transgress against:
Keep away from a false matter.
Do not bear false witness.
Do not hate your brother in your heart.
They are often sympathetic towards the enemies of Israel, as well being unjustifiably condemnatory towards Judah and Joseph. They therefore are close to becoming enemies of the Almighty
and need to repent.

The Defence Department has confirmed a report Iranian naval forces in the
Persian Gulf tried to capture an Australian navy boarding team but were repelled
in the face of machine guns and "highly colourful language".

According to the BBC, the incident took place months before Iranian
Revolutionary Guards seized 15 British sailors and marines in March., setting
off a tense two-week diplomatic stand-off that might have been avoided if
Britain had learned from the Australian encounter.

The Britons were captured over a boundary dispute while they were searching a
cargo boat.

Quoting a "military source", BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner reports
Iranian forces made a concerted attempt to seize a boarding party from the Royal
Australian Navy and that the Australians "were having none of it".

"The BBC has been told the Australians re-boarded the vessel they had just
searched," Gardner reports, "aimed their machine guns at the approaching
Iranians, and warned them to back off, using what was said to be 'highly
colourful language'."

"The Iranians withdrew, and the Australians were reportedly lifted off the ship
by one of their own helicopters."

Speaking to the ABC today, Gardner said the Australian encounter was similar to
that in which the 15 British were captured.

"What I've been told by several sources, military sources, (is that) there was a
similar encounter, in this case between the Royal Australian Navy and Iranian
gunboats, some months ago, or at least some months prior to the seizing of the
British sailors,'' Gardner told ABC radio.

"The Australians escaped capture by climbing back on board the ship they'd just
searched. I'm told that they set up their weapons.

"No shots were exchanged but the Iranians backed off and the Australians were
able to get helicoptered off that ship and they didn't get captured.''

He did not mention the name of the Australian ship. Australians ships rotate
through duties in the Gulf, chiefly searching ships.

"What I'm hearing is that it was a pretty robust attitude by the Australians,''
Gardner told the ABC.

"The words that somebody said to me was that they used pretty colourful language
but I'm sure that alone didn't make the Iranians back off.

"They reacted, I'm told, incredibly quickly, whereas the Brits were caught at
their most vulnerable moment, climbing down off the ship (and) getting into
their boats.''

Gardner said the British should be embarrassed about the incident but the issue
was whether military intelligence had been passed on.

"The point of this story is not that the Aussies were fantastically brave and
the Brits were a bunch of cowards, although I'm sure some people will interpret
(it that way),'' he said.

"Lessons should have been drawn from what happened to the Australian crew.''

IT HAS been described as the "greatest untapped source of energy Scotland
has ever had", capable of generating enough electricity for every home and
business in the country several times over.

But while the Pentland Firth has been too deep and too dangerous to exploit, the
race is now on to develop machines that will harness this "underwater hurricane"
and fundamentally change Scotland.

Not only could it provide endless supplies of electricity for Scotland and
beyond, but spare energy could be used to convert rubbish into environmentally
friendly biofuel for cars, trains and airplanes, slashing greenhouse gas
emissions and ridding the country of landfill sites.

(IsraelNN.com) After rejecting three anti-gay-pride march petitions, the Supreme
Court was finally forced to revoke permission for the homosexuals' post-march
rally.

The contrast in Jerusalem was vivid late Thursday afternoon, as on one end of
the city, 3,000 religious Jews held a prayer rally, while 2-3 kilometers away,
2,000 others were showing off their sexual preferences.

The Israel Broadcasting Authority's Channel One television news showed, for many
consecutive minutes, a split screen with both events - a live depiction of the
struggle for the spirit of Jerusalem, the world's holiest city.

The religious Jews recited Psalms and special Tikun HaKlali and other prayers,
while the homo-lesbian marchers marched with signs supporting homosexuality.

Media reports made much of the fact that 7,000 policemen and women were required
to protect the 2,000 marchers. The parade ended, mostly uneventfully, after an
hour. At one point, the march was stopped for several minutes after a
disturbance caused by two men - dressed as marchers - who started insulting the
gay parade participants.

A dramatic two days in the Supreme Court - Wednesday and Thursday - ended with
what both sides called a victory. Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupoliansky, Trade
Minister Eli Yishai and others filed suits against holding the parade in
Jerusalem, but the Court rejected all of them, ruling essentially that "freedom
of expression" overrides - in this case - the offense caused to public
sensitivities.

Today, on the day of the parade, a fourth, last-minute, suit was filed, claiming
that because of the firefighters' strike and the resulting lack of Fire
Department approval, the parade could not be held. The petitioners said that
their own request to hold a parade of animals yesterday - equating bestiality
with homosexuality - was turned down for a similar reason, namely, the lack of a
necessary permit from the Agriculture Ministry.

Though the Jerusalem Open House (JOH), which organized the gay march, tried to
get fire trucks from other sources, including the Jewish National Fund, they
were unsuccessful. The Court then ruled that the march - a 500-meter affair
along King David St. - could be held, but the "gay happening" to be held
afterwards at Liberty Bell Park must be called off.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Baruch Marzel, who filed the suit, expressed their
satisfaction, saying it had "ruined the party" and promising to continue their
struggle until such marches cease.

Roads Closed, Some Arrests
Roads were closed in various areas of the city in deference to the march and the
prayer rallies, and traffic jams began as early as the mid-morning hours.

Twelve anti-parade protestors were arrested, police found one home-made bomb,
and a hareidi-religious man was arrested as he tried to enter the Temple Mount,
saying he wished to convert to Islam because the authorities had allowed the
parade to take place.

Reflections
One hareidi-religious representative explained on Channel Two television that if
"we had wanted, it's clear we could have stopped the march by bringing out a
million people. But we chose to take a more educational approach - and instead,
the other side, by stubbornly insisting, at whatever cost, on provoking most of
the city's sensibilities, became the 'non-enlightened' ones..."

A Jerusalem woman named Rebecca, who helped organize a petition that collected
tens of thousands of signatures against last year's homosexual parade, said at
the time, "I want to make it clear that this is not a homophobic issue; if the
Mardi Gras, a heterosexual event, were to be held here, we would object with the
same vociferousness. The reason is because Jerusalem is the spiritual dimension
of the world; it is a spiritual jewel to the world, and we don't want it
tarnished... We want to show that the majority of the people in this city do not
want sexuality paraded around without modesty or dignity. In addition,
homosexuality in particular is not something that we want to see advocated in
our holy city."

Andrew Friedman, writing for Ynet last year, said he asked JOH head Noa Sattah
why her organization had not routed the parade through the Muslim and Christian
quarters of Jerualem. "We don?t want to offend them [the Arabs]," she explained,
to which Friedman responded, ?But many Jews are also offended by the march.
Seems to me that means you are careful not to offend Arab residents, but feel it
is your right to offend Jewish ones.? Friedman wrote that Sattah's "silence in
response was deafening."

(IsraelNN.com) The Orthodox Union is sponsoring a conference in Los Angeles to
explore lesser-known Kosher culinary dishes, while keeping the traditions of
their preparation alive for the next generation.

The three-day ?halakhic [Jewish legal] adventure? will begin with a symposium on
?The Mesorah [tradition] of Kosher Birds and Animals,? followed by a ?show and
taste? session at a local Kosher restaurant.

In the following days, the OU will hold Kashrut training seminars for students
and food preparation professionals, dealing with the Jewish legal requirements
for kosher wine and cheese production. The seminars will take place on-location
at local wineries and dairies.

The conference will take place from August 5-7. Two similar events have been
held, in 2004 and 2006, in New York City.

The two men behind the Mesorah Conference phenomenon are Rabbi Dr. Ari
Zivotofsky and Dr. Ari Greenspan, who both immigrated to Israel from the U.S.
The men have devoted years to investigating exotic or rare species that are
kosher but either no longer consumed or consumed only by small communities. They
do this to maintain the tradition of which species are permitted be eaten and
which are not.

The men have examined the kosher status of the giraffe, swan, peacock,
grasshopper, buffalo and other exotic creatures - as well as the manner in which
each are slughtered and prepared for consumption.

The conference will take place at the OU?s West Coast Headquarters, 9831 West
Pico Blvd, from 9:30 AM - 3 PM.

The session will be followed by ?an extraordinary Torah and gastronomic event,?
promises the OU?s Director of Kashrut Education, Rabbi Yosef Grossman. It will
feature quail, red deer, fleishig (meat) eggs, bison, udder, shibuta and
tambaqui (fish that according to the Talmud taste like pork).

?The reception of the two Mesorah Conferences in New York was phenomenal, and so
we made the decision to bring the program to Los Angeles,? Rabbi Grossman
explained.

Tells the story of the son of a
pro-Nazi German soldier.
Says he converted to Judaism and identifies as a Jew
but from the article it is evident he does not lead a Jewish life.
Even so, the article is interesting.

http://www.nzarchaeology.org/netsubnews.htm================================================================
OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
================================================================
Quite a bit of coverage of troops in Iraq getting 'archaeological
playing cards':

JERUSALEM, June 24 (Reuters) - Faced with a Hamas mini-state in the Gaza
Strip, Israel has been preparing contingency plans for a major military
offensive but is unlikely to initiate a confrontation, Israeli officials and
analysts said on Sunday. Though Israel's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes
would seem to dictate crushing what many Israelis call an Iranian-backed
"Hamastan" next door, there is some countervailing optimism about the
Palestinian Islamist group's political priorities.

Israelis are also reluctant to revisit the casualties, confused diplomacy
and global recrimination that accompanied last year's war on Lebanese
Hezbollah -- a guerrilla movement whose methods were adopted by Hamas's
estimated 20,000 fighters.

"Gaza, as a whole, can be considered an enemy state that we may eventually
have to invade. It would be a war zone with the defenders having a big
tactical advantage, so we have been planning accordingly," an Israeli
defence official said.

Israel's assessments are that it would lose scores of troops in a full-on
Gaza offensive, with a ten-fold death toll among the Palestinians, many of
them civilians. Yet the Israeli defence official said Hamas's rout of Fatah
rivals in Gaza's civil war also offered Israel hope for calm.

"It's a paradox, but with Hamas in charge there are no more excuses -- no
more rocket fire or gun attacks by 'splinter groups' that the Palestinan
leadership can disavow. Hamas also has to refocus on the Gazan population's
needs," he said.

Even at the height of the skirmishes with Fatah, Hamas fighters kept away
from the aid-dependent territory's crossings on the Israel frontier,
apparently loath to trigger gunfights with border patrols and a punitive blockade of
vital imports.

A top Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, confirmed that his group was holding
fire against the Jewish state it refuses to recognise, in parallel to
seeking reconciliation with Fatah.

"At the moment we have to deal with two enemies at the same time," Zahar
told the German magazine Der Spiegel.

NO WAY BACK

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation. Few Israelis
would want a return to ruling the territory's 1.5 million Palestinians.

The appointment last week of Defence Minister Ehud Barak, formerly Israel's
most decorated soldier, has spurred anticipation of more aggressive actions
vis-a-vis Gaza.

But for now Barak appears content to stick to Israel's policy of selective
air strikes and commando raids against Palestinians suspected in
cross-border rocket salvoes.

"Barak's main priority is rehabilitating the armed forces after the Lebanon
war," said Alon Ben-David, Israel analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly. "He
won't rush into a ground offensive."

But one analyst, who has access to private briefings from political leaders
and military officers, said: "It's only a matter of time before Israel will
have to go in and dismantle this military infrastructure in Gaza."

There has also been an Israeli campaign to bring foreign peacekeepers to
Gaza, perhaps as a limited garrison on the southern border with Egypt, which
sees frequent arms smuggling.

Beset by domestic Islamist opposition, Egypt has a vested interest in
helping Israel contain Hamas, and has stepped up efforts against the
gun-runners from its side of the frontier.

But the intercession of Arab powers may not be enough to assuage Israel if
it sees Gaza evolving into a front in any future conflict with Iran. Part of
Israel's rationale for attacking Hezbollah, another Iranian ally, was to
counter Tehran's strategic arm in Lebanon. Israel, assumed to be the
region's only nuclear power, has vowed to prevent Iran from attaining
similar capabilities; should that mean war, Hamas could well pitch in from
its turf.

"Iran is here, in Israel's backyard. For now, at least, it's not a strategic
threat," Ben-David said.

LAS VEGAS -- President Bush recently echoed Vice President Dick Cheney's support
for Croatia to join the European Union, a bid that has been stalled because of
the former Yugoslav republic's slowness to own up to and prosecute its 1990s war
crimes and its failure to ensure protections and rights for minorities,
including returning Serb refugees.

Croatia also faces the possibility of being excluded from the 2008 European
soccer championship because when an Italian team's fans taunted the Croatian
team's fans at a match in August by waving Yugoslavia's old communist flag, the
other side took great offense and showed the competition what it was really made
of: They formed a giant human swastika and gave Nazi salutes.

Old habits are hard to break. "In World War II, Hitler had no executioners more
willing, no ally more passionate, than the fascists of Croatia," A. M. Rosenthal
wrote in The New York Times in 1998. "They are returning, 50 years later, from
what should have been their eternal grave, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The
Western Allies who dug that grave with the bodies of their servicemen have the
power to stop them, but do not."

In 1995, The London Evening Standard's Edward Pearce wrote that "you can
understand Croatia best by saying flatly that if there is one place in the world
where a statue of Adolf Hitler would be revered, it would be Zagreb," Croatia's
capital.

And The Washington Times reported: "A German tank rolls through a small village,
and the peasants rush out, lining the road with their right arms raised in a
Nazi salute as they chant, 'Heil Hitler.' Mobs chase minorities from their
homes, kicking them and pelting them with eggs as they flee into the woods.
Europe in the 1940s? No. Croatia in the 1990s."

Last month Croatian TV broadcast video of a speech made 10 years ago by Stjepan
Mesic, now Croatia's president. Mr. Mesic is seen saying, "This thing they're
asking Croats to do: go kneel in [Croatian concentration camp] Jasenovac ... we
have no reason to kneel anywhere. We Croats have won twice in World War II,
while all the others did it only once. We won on April 10, when the Axis powers
recognized Croatia's independence, and we won after the war since we once again
found ourselves with the victors."

Such were the "allies" to whom retired American generals were dispatched in the
1990s to train against the Serbs and help restore Croatia to its Hitler-defined
borders. (We later did the same for Kosovo, whose independence we continue to
push for.) One has to wonder at the ubiquitous "Nazi" analogies hurled at the
Serbs - the designated villains of the Balkans - considering that this analogy
was started by a former Nazi state that in 1995 ethnically cleansed 350,000
Serbs and by its Muslim former apprentices who helped kill hundreds of thousands
of Serbs, Jews and other undesirables in 40 of Croatia's World War II
concentration camps.

One has to wonder also because Croatia (along with Bosnia and Kosovo) hired
American PR firms to make the analogy stick. Sure enough, our policymakers and
our media - on the same page when it comes to the Balkans - bought it and
recycled the propaganda to us, and continue to do so today. This despite the
fact that our ally, President Franjo Tudjman - the "Father of Croatia" - was
about to be hit with a war crimes indictment that was finally, slowly and
quietly being prepared by the United Nations, allowing him to die a free man.
(As was the case with wartime Bosnian-Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, a
fundamentalist who asked to be buried "next to the martyrs.")

To placate the European powers, Croatia has finally apprehended two of its most
notorious criminals from the Balkan wars, Ante Gotovina and Branimir Glavas -
despite the move being very unpopular because, as with Bosnian and Albanian
Serb-killers, Croatian Serb killers are national heroes.

While to the world, "Serb" is synonymous with "war criminal," Croatians,
Albanians and Bosnians accused of war crimes get acquitted, or get convicted and
released to a hero's welcome, or go unpunished and pursue political careers, as
is the case with indicted war criminal and Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku (and
Ramush Haradinaj before him). All the while, we refuse to admit our 1990s
alliance in Croatia with Nazi sympathizers, and in Bosnia and Kosovo with forces
supplied and trained by al-Qaida, Iran and others.

A recent breakthrough occurred in October, when Zarko Puhovski, the Croatian
president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, said on a radio program
that war crimes in the Croatian town of Osijek are still unsolved because 1990s
Croatia was a place where killing Serbs was normal. "In the first few years it
was normal to kill Serbs, then it was normal to forget they had been killed, and
now we finally talk about it," he said.

The Serbs weren't angels, but they are the only Balkans players to have admitted
as much and actively done something about it. The media, our policymakers and
our filmmakers still refuse to take the messier but more accurate view of the
Balkans. For it is the more daunting task, one that could force the realization
that the Serbs weren't just fighting their enemies; they were fighting ours.

Nazism is not "part of the ugly past." It was not a bout of madness that has
been straightened out. The undead are among us.

(IsraelNN.com) Israeli researchers have discovered what the ancients knew
thousands of years ago; that copper contains anti-bacterial and anti-microbial
properties.

Copper, once mined in the southern Israeli area known as Timna, has been used
throughout history for a variety of purposes, such as piping to keep water free
of parasites, in shipbuilding to prevent algae from clinging to ships and even
by French wineries to inhibit the growth of fungus on the precious grapevines.

Ancient Egypt appreciated its value using it both for its beauty and its
anti-bacterial value.

Now the Cupron company, founded ten years ago by Jeffrey Gabbay, has taken that
knowledge and brought it forward for modern use.

The sunset-colored metal is being integrated into textiles as a way to minimize
odor and viruses, according to a report on the Israel21c website.

Cupron researchers developed technologies that have incorporated copper oxide in
an array of novel applications, which will be recognized this year with the
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices award for technological innovations.

Cupron's researchers, based in a facility which can be used to prevent and
heal the infections that are so dangerous to those with diabetes.

The company has also developed surgical masks that contain active ingredients
that help prevent medical staff from becoming infected with such
life-threatening illnesses as SARS, avian flu and other viruses. "If and when
the virus enters our mask," says Gabbay, "our mask will deactivate the virus."

When used in gloves, Cupron's technology is used in food handling, food
processing and health care.

"We know we're the innovators of the year," Gabby notes. But, he added, "It is
gratifying to know that we have contributed to solving the conundrum of
anti-microbial activity in textiles."

Cupron has teamed up with a number of U.S. companies, such as Gloves2Go and
Renfro Corporation, producers of gloves and socks. The company's treated fabrics
will also soon be tested in the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, where Gabby
expects the product to prove itself by drastically reducing the number of germs,
viruses, and dust mites that often further compromise the health of patients
whose immune systems are already fragile.

Testing on viral applications is performed at the company's laboratories in
Rehovot. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have also carried out
testing on Cupron?s data.

Now the challenge will be getting the word out to the general public. "The U.S.
marines already use [the copper oxide socks] to help them avoid or cure
athlete?s foot," says Gabbay. "But people don?t believe what they're seeing."

Companies do, however, and Cupron is now busy in talks with three cosmetic firms
as well, to develop products that will "reduce wrinkles and get rid of crow's
feet"

Adds Gabbay, "You could say we jumped on a moving train."

5. Ancient Incas from Peru in Norway?Norwegian arhaeologists are puzzled by a find which indicates an Inca
Indian died and was buried in the Oestfold city of Sarpsborg 1000 years ago.
/ np
26.06.2007 06:57

The remains of two elderly men and a baby were discovered during work in a
garden, and one of the skulls indicates that the man was an Inca Indian.

- There is a genetic flaw in the neck, which is believed to be limited to the
Incas in Peru, says arahaeologist Mona Beate Buckholm.

Concerning Doc.Sutter.com
forwarded by a strong supporter of "BC" (who else?) who once threatened
us with retribution if we continued our criticism of "Chamish".
[Brit-Am would be happy not to be occupied self with Conspiracy filth.
Just stop sending it to us.]

This what the Conspiracy URL says:
<<Every time I see the Brits honoring their Queen I think, "Man, don't they know
what she is?" They HAVE to know - they worship her anyway. The Brits love their
Queen. One of the "elites" that are bringing us this global enterprise, taking
our freedoms away one at a time. One of the designers of this New World Order.
Don't they know that??
Evil. ...>>

<<Well, lets see where other "common" people measure up with all this. You know,
us useless eaters, the goym, the masses, etc.>>

Brit-Am Comment:
It is not the Queen nor the British who are evil but the Conspiracy Freaks...
They are the ones who revive anti-semitism and make it respectable, who tell
lies about people better than them, who denigrate the USA and Britain, who advocate
treason and betrayal all under
the veneer of respectability...
Get the last quote, the apparent innocuous insertion of "goyim" [the Jewish
word for Gentiles] amongst the list of "common" people "doctor"
"sutton" (and maybe neither of
either) names as being victimized.
And who is victimizing them?
Why obviously the one group to whom the term"goyim" would not apply.
We see here the linkage of the "British" and the Jews in the list of Public
Enemies in the diseased mind of Conspiracy Freaks.
[In the past British Israel linked up with Conspiracy Freaks and in effect by
doing so engaged in treasonous association with Conspiracy Freak enemies of the Israelite Nations.]

Seven years ago, I was walking on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem with a
Catholic priest, an American who served a Palestinian parish in the area. We got
to talking about the ongoing political crisis among the Palestinians. The priest
said the most confounding thing about Palestinian politics was the power of
rumor and conspiracy theory over the people.

"Last week after Mass, my parishioners were telling me that Arafat is really a
Jew," the priest said. "This is what they'd heard, and they believed it
completely."

Yasser Arafat a Jew? Really, they believe that?

"Yes", said the priest, "and next week", he said, "they'll have heard the complete
opposite and will believe that just as fervently." The priest reflected sadly
that the susceptibility of the Palestinians, Christians and Muslims, both
to rumor made it appallingly easy for corrupt politicians to exploit the common
people.

I thought about that story recently as I peered into a window of an Istanbul
bookstore and saw on display a title purporting to explain how the leader of
Turkey's ruling Islamist party is really a "son of Moses" that is, a Jew.
As preposterous as that sounds, as preposterous as that is, there are
plenty of people in Turkey prepared to believe it.

Given Turkey's current political struggle between Islamists on one side and
military-backed secularists and nationalists on the other, rumors that take on
the weight of fact can tip the balance of power.

The power of rumor is perhaps nowhere more destructive in the current moment
than in the Muslim world. At a recent journalism conference in Istanbul, Boston
University international relations professor Husain Haqqani cited several recent
examples of ridiculous rumors that swept portions of the Islamic world,
frightening millions:

In April, terror gripped Pakistanis convinced that the nation's cellphones were
serving as vectors for a deadly biological virus that was transmitted by
cellular calls originating from a particular number. The rumor was believed by
rich and poor, educated and illiterate alike, and caused crowds to turn off
their cellphones for fear of being struck dead by a lethal call.

Also in April, a rumor that the Israelis had smuggled a million HIV-infected
melons into Saudi Arabia swept the kingdom, sparking speculation that the
Zionists had opened a bold front in biological warfare on Muslims.

In recent years, Islamic leaders in northern Nigeria have warned believers
against accepting polio vaccinations, advising that the medicine is part of a
Western plot to sterilize Muslims. Though public health authorities have since
made progress in calming people's worries, hundreds of Nigerian children became
infected with polio in the meantime, and the disease, which had been virtually
extinguished in Africa, has made a comeback in at least 10 nations on the
continent.

"Conspiracy theories have been popular among Muslims since the twilight years of
the Ottoman Empire as a way of explaining the powerlessness of a community that
was at one time the world's economic, scientific, political and military
leader," said Dr. Haqqani, co-chairman of the Islam and Democracy Project at
Washington's Hudson Institute.

A weakness for conspiracy theory goes hand in hand with willingness to credit
rumors as fact. Both, he said, are part of a psychological strategy that helps
Muslims cope with their own humiliation and lack of economic, technological and
educational development relative to the rest of the world. Yet the inability to
deal straightforwardly with facts not only makes relations between Muslim
nations and the rest of the world unnecessarily difficult, it also perpetuates
the knowledge deficit and weakness pervading the Muslim world.

While cultures of developing nations, and not just Islamic ones, can be
rumor-prone for therapeutic reasons, in some instances rumor culture thrives as
a result of despotic government.

"During the dictatorship of Pinochet, the Chilean public got used to the fact
that the official story delivered by the media was always manipulated and
missing the truth," said Mauricio Avila, information editor of Publimetro Chile,
a Santiago daily. "This feeling is still alive today, and there is skepticism
that the media tells the truth. Because of that, rumors [are] much more credible
than the facts themselves."

Similarly in Uganda, government control of the news media, which didn't end
until 1992, trained the public to rely on rumor and word of mouth to learn what
was really going on. David Sseppuuya, a veteran Ugandan newspaper journalist,
said that a glorified grapevine called Radio Katwe, a rumor mill that has never
been a real radio station, became a trusted source of news and information
under the dictatorship of Idi Amin.

Though Radio Katwe clearly mixed myth, rumor and fact, said Mr. Sseppuuya,
Ugandans, who have a long history as an oral culture, even believed outlandish
stories it circulated about talking animals portending political change. After
one of these rumors involving a conversational serpent made the rounds in 1981,
"there was pandemonium and some shooting," said Mr. Sseppuuya.

Americans who read stories like this might smile, shake their heads and give
thanks that they don't live amid such gullible people. They can only maintain
that pose of superiority if they ignore the destructive role rumor played in the
immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The moral panic surrounding Katrina,
stoked in part by media rumor-mongering, had serious, perhaps even lethal,
consequences for stranded New Orleanians.

As The Times-Picayune later proved, most of those hysterical early reports of
rapes, snipers firing on rescue helicopters and general anarchy in the streets
were groundless, even though city officials like Mayor Ray Nagin and Chief of
Police Eddie Compass helped propagate the bad information.

For example, multiple reports of sniper fire against helicopters caused
authorities to shut down rescue efforts for hours. These myths left hundreds of
sick and elderly people stuck atop hospital and nursing home roofs, in mortal
danger.

The news media and the electronic grapevine passed these and other unverified
stories on, and they shaped the wider public's image of a city out of control.
In turn, this created the impression that victims were actually dangerous. In
one infamous case, police officers from the suburb of Gretna refused to let New
Orleanians walking out of the drowning city pass into their town for fear that
they carried the contagion of anarchy.

The difference between truth and rumor became a matter of life and death.

In the United States, the proliferation of information technology has empowered
not only journalists, who use the Internet for research, but also ordinary
people who read, watch and listen to journalists' work. Bloggers aggressively
critique media accounts, challenging facts, logic and bias at every turn.
Perhaps most famously, bloggers shot down a potentially devastating 60 Minutes
story in 2004 on President Bush's National Guard record, and in so doing
prematurely ended the national journalism careers of CBS anchor Dan Rather and
veteran producer Mary Mapes.

To be sure, truthiness is part of the human condition. One reason many were
quick to believe the worst about New Orleans is that the horror stories fit what
people in south Louisiana, at least, had been conditioned for years (and not
without good reason) to believe about the Crescent City's social dysfunction.
Similarly, it was easy for emotionally distraught Americans to believe that New
Orleans was turning into Mogadishu because that story line played to deep fears
and stereotypes about poor black folks. Any American who wants to stand in
judgment of hysterics in Islamabad, Riyadh or Lagos has to confront Katrina
first.

It's not news that people are prone to believing things that confirm their
biases. What is news, I think, is that people are losing the sense that truth is
knowable and that one has a moral obligation to seek the truth, no matter how
difficult it may be to deal with. Truth is often painful, but truthiness is
therapeutic.

Granted, it is not given to any one man or woman to know the truth in all its
fullness (and beware those arrogant enough to claim that they do). But to
believe that truth exists, and that it can be known to a great degree, is not
only the foundation for moral inquiry, democratic political debate, honest
scholarship, good government, robust journalism, inspiring preaching and other
things vital to a prosperous and civil existence. It is also the minimal
standard for living in sanity.

As the great lawyer Clarence Darrow put it, "Chase after the truth like all hell
and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails."

3. Arutz 7
Exclusive: Arab Squatters Ordered Off Stolen Jewish Land in Jerusalemby Ezra HaLevi
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122909
The article relates the case of
Yitzchak
Herskovitzwho is a personal friend of Yair Davidiy, sympathetic to
the cause of Brit-Am, and has a justifiable reputation of being a good man ever ready to help others
according to his ability.Jerusalem News-641
16 Tammuz 5767, 3 July 2007

After their military defeat by regular forces, the occupied
population produced terrorists who engaged in bombings, sniping,
poisonings, and other attacks on occupation forces and on the
civilian population. They operated as irregulars in small terror
units, armed with automatic weapons and bazookas.

Women and minors as young as eight participated in the terror
attacks. They attempted to build weapons of mass destruction, using
chemical poisons. They assassinated officials of the occupation
regime. They had a special obsession with torturing and murdering
"collaborators." They murdered hundreds of civilians, while thousands
of the terrorists themselves were killed by the occupation armed
forces. The occupiers responded to terror with brutality and force,
sometimes using collective punishment.

**************************************************************

The above does not refer to or describe the anti-American and
anti-British terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor does it describe
Palestinian terrorism against Israel launched from the West Bank and
Gaza.

What it does refer to is the campaign of terrorism directed against
Allied forces in Europe in the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi
Germany. The terrorists were members of a number of underground
"resistance" organizations attempting to punish the Allied
"occupiers" and drive them out. The most important of the terror
groups was known as Werwolf (German for werewolf).

Until recently, relatively little was known about groups like
Werwolf. But several books, particular those authored by Perry
Biddiscombe, a professor of history at the University of British
Columbia, have shed light on the activities of the groups and on the
anti-terror strategies that ultimately defeated them.

Most of what follows is based on the research of Biddiscombe. There
are valuable lessons to be learned from the campaign against the
Werwolf, both for the U.S.-led coalition fighting in Iraq and for
Israel in its battles against Arab terrorism.

For many years now the conventional wisdom has been that terrorism
cannot be defeated militarily, that it can only be stopped when its
underlying grievances are redressed and appeased. Moreover, the
entire strategy of dealing with terrorism militarily has long been
under assault by the Western chattering classes as ineffective and
unjust.

Anti-terror tactics used by the contemporary Allies in Iraq and
Afghanistan or by Israel against its enemies have been denounced by
the media and by countless public figures, especially in Western
Europe. But the claim that terrorism and guerilla warfare cannot be
defeated militarily is false, as illustrated by the campaign against
the Werwolf.

Origins and Tactics

Nazi preparations for a campaign of terrorism against the invading
Allies were underway by 1943. At first the intention was for
irregular fighters to serve as a diversionary force operating behind
enemy lines. The name "Werwolf" (also spelled "Wehrwolf") was chosen
from a book by Hermann Lons (Der Wehrwolf) glamorizing a 17th century
German guerilla fighter.

The Werwolf developed into a large full-fledged terrorist
organization, operating under the command of the SS. It operated in
"groups" consisting of 4 to 6 fighters, with 6 to 10 groups forming a
"sector" and 6 to 8 sectors forming a "section." At its height, the
Werwolf organization probably had about 6,000 fighters, though it
could call on the support and cooperation of other units such as the
Volksturm, a militia of the elderly and very young set up by Hitler
near the end of the war. Himmler took personal control of operations
starting in 1944.

The technology of those terrorists was of course far more primitive
than that used by modern Middle East terrorists, but some of the
similarities in technique are striking. Beheadings were a common
Werwolf tactic. Decades before the pilfering of the museums of
Baghdad, the Werwolf were under orders to sabotage and destroy art
galleries, museums and other cultural institutions. While Germany
never produced a campaign of suicide bombers, Werwolf terrorists were
equipped with cyanide tablets and expected to commit suicide rather
than be taken captive.

In the campaign against the Werwolf, an estimated 3,000-5,500
terrorists were killed. Werwolf terrorism continued well after formal
hostilities ended and Germany had surrendered. In the German area of
Italy, South Tyrol, where a German separatist movement was active,
sabotage, bombings and Werwolf guerilla violence continued into the
1960's.

As part of the campaign of terrorism, German Red Cross ambulances
routinely carried arms and munitions, long before the Palestinians
perfected that technique. Buildings thought to be designated for use
as Allied barracks were mined, especially in Lorraine (where the
attacks were directed against the U.S. Third Army). Werwolf
terrorists collected caches of poison gases and chemical weapons,
most of which were discovered by Allied forces before they could be
used.

The Werwolf used death squads and assassination hit teams, often
against German civilians whom the terrorists suspected of
collaboration or defeatism. Civil authorities in German towns under
Allied occupation were favorite targets. Priests, public officials,
and even German villagers flying white surrender flags were attacked.

Werwolf terrorists were each typically equipped with 15-20 pounds of
explosives and small arms, often including bazookas. Generally they
operated stealthily without uniform, in civilian clothes. They set up
caches of armaments in farms, caves, forests, and abandoned mines.
Interestingly, there was a female contingent of terrorists, a unit of
which, equipped with bazookas, played an important role in the last
weeks of fighting around Berlin.

Children were also frequently used in terror attacks. The
Hitlerjugend, or Hitler Youth, was one of the main sources of
recruits for the Werwolf. Entire units of Werwolf consisted of
minors. Teenage Werwolf terrorists were involved in bombing the Red
Army barracks near Hindenberg. Child snipers shot and threw grenades
at advancing American forces. Himmler himself invented an incentive
system for Hitler Youth serving in the Werwolf: 100 cigarettes for
ten sniper kills; 20 days' leave for twenty kills; a watch and Iron
Cross for fifty kills.

A unit of 14-year-olds attacked U.S. forces near Nuremberg.
"Operation Nursery," a campaign against Werwolf terrorism by minors,
was mounted by U.S. and British troops and continued well into 1946.

The terrorists used a variety of techniques. In addition to sniping
and bombings, decapitation wires were popular - thin piano wire
stretched across a road just at the height of the necks of drivers of
Allied vehicles or motorcycles. Allied forces sometimes retaliated
against such attacks by beheading captured terrorists. In
Schleswig-Holstein, the British lopped off the heads of a dozen
terrorists.

Mass poisoning was another favorite terrorist method. It was used
with horrific success especially, but not exclusively, against Red
Army troops. Between February and July 1945, 180 American troops were
murdered with poisoned liquor. The Werwolf would spike liquor and
food with odorless poison and wait for the troops to indulge. A
special entity called the KTI, or Criminal Technical Institute, would
prepare the poisons.

While the armed conflict raged, Werwolf terrorists were active in
capturing, torturing and murdering enemy troops. But as the war drew
to a close, the Werwolf began to specialize in terrorizing German
civilians suspected of collaborating with or failing to resist the
Allies' advance.

Werwolf terrorism was strongest on the Eastern front, as Soviet
forces threatened East Prussia, Silesia, and other areas regarded by
Germans as part of their heartland. The Werwolf even ran its own
radio station.

Ferocious Response

How were those terrorists eventually defeated? With brutal military
force and counter-terrorism combined with a long-term program of
denazification of German civilians.

The Soviets were by far the least squeamish of the Allies when it
came to suppressing Werwolf terrorism. According to a Vatican report,
"Russian reprisals were terrible. Using flame-throwers the Russians
destroyed entire blocks of houses causing the deaths of hundreds of
the inhabitants."

Soviet troops dealt with the threat through mass executions, mass
arrests, marauding, and arson directed against German civilians.
Hostages were grabbed from areas where any Werwolf sabotage took
place and often were summarily executed. Any Germans - even hunters -
possessing any weapons were shot on the spot as terrorists. Any
German witnessing terror attacks who did not come forward to testify
about them was shot. Those hiding terrorists or weapons were shot and
their homes burned to the ground.

As of October 1946, the Soviets were holding 3,336 Werwolf terrorists
in prison within the Soviet zone. The Soviets also crowded 240,000
suspected Werwolf sympathizers into a prison camp (where fully a
third simply perished). In Jarmin in Pomerania, when German
terrorists killed two Soviet troops, the entire town was demolished.
In Schivelbein, after a Soviet general was killed by a sniper, the
Soviets murdered every man in town.

Soviet looting and marauding in occupied German areas continued
unrestrained into 1947. While such behavior may strike us as
barbarous retaliation, Biddiscombe describes it thus: "None the less,
given what the Werwolf was doing, or trying to do, the responses of
the occupiers do not lay beyond the realm of comprehension." The
Soviets were still concerned about threats of Werwolf sabotage and
terror in Eastern Europe during the 1950's.

The French were second to the Soviets in the viciousness and ferocity
of their suppression of Werwolf terrorism. French soldiers pillaged
German areas as they fell under their control. Random beatings of
Germans by the French were common. The French forcibly expelled all
German civilians from numerous towns and villages in their area of
control. General Le Clerc issued an edict on November 25, 1944 to
shoot five Germans for every act of sniping near Strasbourg.

Following some Werwolf activity around Constance, French forces
grabbed 400 hostages and executed two. Any building in the French
zone with Werwolf graffiti on it was immediately demolished. Owners
had at most an hour to remove such graffiti once it appeared in order
to avoid such a fate. Collective fines were imposed on German
civilians for sabotage activities in their area. Wholesale travel and
curfew restrictions were imposed on the entire German population.

While American troops generally avoided the excesses of the Soviets
and French, they were sharply criticized by the British for using
excessive brutality and force in suppressing the Werwolf. General
Eisenhower ordered the execution of all Werwolf fighters captured in
civilian garb.

It was understood among U.S. troops that they had a green light for
applying frontier justice to terrorists, with no lawyers or trials.
The counterinsurgency manual issued by the Supreme Headquarters
Allied Expedition Force (SHAEF) recommended that troops simply ignore
Geneva Convention rules when dealing with the Werwolf.

SHAEF instructions allowed using captive Germans in forced labor;
seizure of German civilians as hostages; collective punishment;
shooting of hostages; and massive bombings of civilian areas
containing terrorists. Threats to shoot all curfew violators were
commonly made. At Lutzkampen, Allied troops threatened to burn down
the village if there were any violations of curfew.

When U.S. troops were attacked at Aschaffenburg in Lower Franconia,
the entire town was annihilated by Seventh Army artillery. In the
fall of 1945, well after the surrender, U.S. forces still regarded
Werwolf bands as "one of the biggest potential threats to security in
both the American and Allied Zones of Occupation."

Around Stuttgart, members of Werwolf bazooka teams were shot on sight
by American troops. Massive artillery bombardment of civilian areas
with snipers was used whenever it was thought such action could
prevent Allied troop casualties. In Krefeld, one of the first towns
taken by the Americans, 120,000 civilians were rounded up and held in
detention camps.

Other Allied forces were vicious in suppressing the Werwolf. The
Czechoslovaks routinely tortured and abused captured terrorists. The
most dramatic Czechoslovak actions took place in the Sudetenland.
After some Czechs were murdered by the Werwolf, local authorities
threatened to shoot all German refugees there who had arrived from
Silesia.

In July 1945 a large explosion took place in Aussig an der Elbe,
killing 50 people. Blaming local ethnic Germans, the authorities
killed German civilians in reprisal. The remaining German population
was expelled from the town. Slovaks and Poles often treated Germans
little better.

Canadian forces were also brutal in suppressing terrorism. Canadian
General Chris Vokes carried out large-scale destruction of German
property in retaliation for guerilla activities. Towns from which
sniper fire was directed against Canadian troops were reduced to
rubble. Orders were given to demolish buildings housing snipers
rather than risk the lives of troops. German homes were bulldozed. No
"solidarity" protesters picketed the corporate headquarters of the
companies manufacturing the bulldozers.

As is the case with the terrorism directed against U.S. troops in
Iraq and against Jews in Israel, Werwolf terror was never in and of
itself an existential threat, nor did it represent a serious military
strategy capable of defeating regular armies. Rather, it was designed
to demoralize - to defeat the enemy by generating growing casualties
over long periods and trigger defeatism among the enemy's home
population.

While no one in his or her right mind would advocate some of the more
excessive means used to suppress the German terrorists of the late
1940's, that era nevertheless teaches us that a determined
no-nonsense campaign of wiping out terrorism with armed force is
capable of succeeding, even against the most brutal of opponents.
Determined denazification of fanatic violent populations was also
shown to work.

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
A storm has revealed remains of some Iron Age (maybe) roundhouses
in Scotland:

Question:
Dolores,
> Since both my husband and I match the Indian group of W, I signed us up for
the ftdna India group. We are kits #10103 and 11918. The email I got was they
would be happy to accept us if we could show Indian ancestry. I thought our
mtdna did that. Any thoughts? Dolores

Answer:
As you know, I'm familiar with much of the history of your mtDNA
haplogroup issues. But I had not heard of this branch of W being called
the "Indian group of W." Could you tell us on what basis you have
called it that? I would not think having this haplotype is a definite
indication of Indian ancestry. At least not your haplotype, since it
has been found in Finland by Finnil? I think your husband's is most
likely an offshoot of the group you belong to.

It certainly is unusual to have both members of a couple belong to the
same rare mtDNA group!

There are many ethnic-based projects at FTDNA, and generally they don't
accept project members on the basis of having a similar haplotype to
other members. They need to see some other indication of your family's
having that heritage.

For example, there are many people who believe they may have Jewish
ancestry, on the basis of their test results and for other reasons, but
this does not usually qualify them to join a Jewish DNA project. If
all the people who believe they have Jewish ancestry were allowed to
join, they would very possibly outnumber the members who have definite,
known, recent Jewish ancestry.

Having matches with an unusual DNA type is an intriguing way of gaining
clues about your ancient origins, but it can't be seen as proof in
itself. Especially with mtDNA, someone might have had a common
ancestor thousands of years ago, and still match. Personally, I would
not consider someone to belong to an ethnic group if their last common
ancestor with the members of that ethnic group were thousands of years
ago.

But I realize that many people who are testing their DNA may have no
hesitation in claiming an ethnicity on the basis of their test results.
And many on the list may well disagree with me. I don't want to debate
this further, though, I have too many other things urgently demanding my
time.

It's my years of study in anthropology and related disciplines that
convinces me that ethnic identity has many elements other than genetics,
which are just as important, and to the members of the group itself, may
be far more important than genetics. These include cultural and
religious factors, and shared historical experience, among other things.

I hope you will not feel too hurt about the rejection by the Indian
project, but realize that this happens to many people who have tried to
join ethnic projects. A minor example is the Swiss Anabaptist project,
of which I'm a co-administrator. While we don't want to be too
restrictive, a person should not join this project just because of a
belief that their ancestors were Swiss -- they also need to have some
grain of evidence that their specific ancestors were, at some point,
part of an Anabaptist community (that is, Amish, Mennonite, or Brethren,
etc.) Otherwise it would defeat the purpose of the project, to
discover which Y and mtDNA types are found among the members of this
community, who descend from a small number of known founders.

A Viking ship 'Havhingsten' (The Sea Stallion from Glendalough) has been
reconstructred.
The ship is 30 meters long, the original was build in Dublin in 1042, sunk
30 years later in the Fjord of Roskilde, Denmark, and excavated 50 years
ago, known as Skuldelev 2.
It took approximately four years to build the largest ever made replica of a
Viking long ship and the costs reached ten mio. DKK (1, 4 mio EUR).
300 oak threes, 7000 ion nails, a sail of 112 square meters and 2000 meter
of rope was used.
The crew is supposed to have been between 70-80 men, today a crew of 65
women and men are sailing the ship from Denmark 'back to Dublin' .

DEBKAfile: Right of appeal to Libyan agent was partly influenced bysuspicions
that Iran and Syria, not Libya, planned 1988 Lockerbie bombing

July 1, 2007, 12:00 PM (GMT+02:00)

June 28, the Scottish Criminal Cases Commission granted former Libyan agent
Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, serving a 27-year sentence, the right to appeal his
conviction six years ago for planning the attack, saying the "applicant may have
suffered a miscarriage of justice."

DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources disclose the Scottish commission's decision
was influenced by the increasing conviction of Western intelligence experts that
Iran and Syria, not Libya, may have planned the bombing disaster, which cost 270
lives, 259 aboard the Pan Am airliner and 11 when the flaming plane crashed
down on the Scottish village of Lockerbie. Those sources say US and British
undercover agencies have garnered evidence that Tehran and Damascus used a
Palestinian terrorist group to carry out the bombing, the deadliest in the
history of aviation terror.

This development would suit Libyan ruler Muammer Qaddafi's plans at this time.
He hopes to use a possible acquittal to duck out of a key clause of his 2003
contract to dismantle Libya's weapons of mass destruction and retain some of his
chemical substances.

As part of the 2003 deal, which ended eight years of sanctions against Libya,
Qaddafi assumed responsibility for his agents? role in the Pan Am bombing.

He agreed to turn over two Libyan security agents, one of them Megrahi, and
compensate the victims' families. Megrahi was convicted by a Scottish court and
the second agent was acquitted.

Qaddafi was first suspected in 1989 of ordering his agents to blow up Pan Am 103
to avenge the 1986 US air raid of his residential compound in Tripoli which
killed his 15-year old adopted daughter Hanna.

There are now grounds to suspect that Iran, not Libya, may have instigated the
Lockerbie attack in retaliation for the an incident five months earlier in July
1988 when the USS Vincennes destroyer shot down an Iranian passenger flight over
the Persian Gulf with missiles, killing 290 passengers and crew. The vessel's
captain was said to have believed the Iranian flight was bound on a suicide
mission against his ship. The US Navy's final report refuted the claim appearing
in some American media at the time that the captain was drunk. The report
imputed the crew's error to "psychological stress on men in combat for the first
time." The captain went on later to win a commendation.

Tehran insisted the attack was a deliberate act of aggression against the
Khomeini regime. It is now assumed that Iran may have entrusted Damascus with
recruiting a Palestinian team experienced in hijacking commercial planes to
orchestrate and execute the Pan Am mission.

The study's preliminary results, disclosed Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal,
showed that circumcision reduced the risk of contracting HIV by 70 percent -- a
level of protection far better than the 30 percent risk reduction set as a
target for an AIDS vaccine.

According to the newspaper account, the study under way in Orange Farm township,
South Africa, was stopped because the results were so favorable. It was deemed
unethical to continue the trial after an early peek at data showed that the
uncircumcised men were so much more likely to become infected.

All of the men in the study had been followed for a year, and half the men had
been followed for the full 21 months called for in the original study design,
according to the Wall Street Journal, which obtained a draft copy of the study.

Begun in August 2002, the experiment is one of three closely watched clinical
trials in Africa to determine whether there is scientific merit to nearly three
dozen less rigorously controlled studies showing that circumcised men were much
less likely to become HIV-positive.

The hope is that, lacking a vaccine, the nearly 5 million new HIV infections
occurring each year could be slowed by circumcision, the surgical removal of the
foreskin -- a simple, low-cost and permanent medical intervention that is a
common but controversial cultural practice in much of the world. In Africa,
about 70 percent of men are circumcised at birth or during rite-of-passage
ceremonies in early puberty.

Medical anthropologists began noticing as early as 1989 that the highest rates
of HIV infection in Africa were occurring in regions of the continent where the
predominant tribal or religious cultures did not practice circumcision. Adult
HIV infection rates above 30 percent are found in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland
and eastern South Africa, where circumcision is not practiced; yet HIV infection
rates remain below 5 percent in West Africa and other parts of the continent
where circumcision is commonplace.

Laboratory studies have found that the foreskin is rich in white blood cells,
which are favored targets of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. So the theory is
that men who are uncircumcised are much more likely to contract the virus during
sex with an infected woman, and that the epidemic spreads when these newly
infected men have sex with other women within their network of sexual partners.

The lead investigators of the study, Dr. Bertran Auvert of the University of
Paris and Adrian Puren of South Africa's National Institute for Communicable
Diseases, are not talking. The results were expected to be discussed at an AIDS
conference in Rio de Janeiro in three weeks. But word about the findings has
been circulating among researchers searching for ways to slow the epidemic.

"I would be thrilled if it works, but we will also need the results of other
trials,'' said Johns Hopkins University epidemiologist Ronald Gray, who is
conducting, in Uganda, one of two other controlled clinical trials of male
circumcision.

Gray's trial, which has completed enrollment of 5,000 men in the Rakai district
of Uganda, is not scheduled to end until 2007.

A third trial, under way in Kisumu, Kenya, is still enrolling its quota of 2,700
volunteers and is also expected to be completed in 2007, according to the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is sponsoring it.

All three trials were designed to compare the HIV infection rates of two groups
of HIV-negative men, one-half of whom would agree to be circumcised, the other
to be offered only counseling on AIDS prevention. The studies were designed to
show whether or not circumcision provided a statistically significant protective
effect of at least 50 percent.

The South African study -- if the results are confirmed -- suggests that the
level of protection afforded is even higher.

Although the apparent protective effect of circumcision has been noted for more
than 20 years, doubts linger as to whether circumcision itself is protective, or
whether the lower risk may be the result of cultural practices among those who
circumcise. HIV rates are low in Muslim communities, for example, which practice
male circumcision but also engage in ritual washing before sex and frown on
promiscuity.

E-mail Sabin Russell at srussell@sfchronicle.com

2. How a Jewish
patriot saved AmericaBy Richard Booker
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56500In 1975 the United States Postal Service issued a stamp honoring a man named
Haym Salomon for his contribution to the cause of the American Revolution. This
stamp was uniquely printed on the front and the back. On the glue side of the
stamp, the following words were printed in pale, green ink: "Financial Hero ?
Businessman and broker Haym Salomon was responsible for raising most of the
money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation
from collapse." I personally have one of these stamps. Historians who have
studied the story of Salomon all agree that without his "contribution to the
cause" there would be no America today.

Haym Salomon bought and sold financial papers to raise money for Robert Morris
who was the superintendent of finance for the Continental Congress. He believed
that America would be a safe haven for the Jews. But this son of a rabbi also
believed that one day in the future, Jerusalem would rise from the dust, the
Jews would return to their ancient homeland, and Israel and Jerusalem would once
again be the home of the wandering Jew. Salomon determined to do all he could to
finance the Revolution so America could survive until that future time when his
people would once again fill the streets of Jerusalem.

From one crisis to the next, Robert Morris went to Haym Salomon for help, and
Salomon always responded. Salomon gave his entire personal fortune of over
$800,000 to the cause of the Revolution. This debt was never repaid. He died
sick and penniless at the age of 45, Jan. 6, 1785, leaving behind a young widow,
Rachel, and four children all under the age of 7.

Rachel tried for months after Haym's death to collect on personal loans that he
had made to Morris, to the Congress and others. She was requested to turn all
her securities and certificates over to the state treasurer of Pennsylvania for
evaluation. After several months, she made further inquiries and was informed
that all of the papers relating to her inheritance had been lost.

Haym Salomon was buried in Mikveh Israel Cemetery in Philadelphia in a grave
that is now unmarked. Since we don't know which his grave is, we cannot even pay
our respects at his graveside nor erect a marker.

But the story of Haym Salomon doesn't end with an unmarked grave. There is a
plaque on a brick wall bordering the cemetery that was placed by Haym's
great-grandson, William Salomon, in 1917. It says, "To the Memory of Haym
Salomon ? interred in this Cemetery the location of the grave being now unknown.
?"

Was it just a coincidence that the year this plaque was erected was the same
year of the Balfour Declaration issued by the British, which begins, "His
majesty's Government views with favor the establishing in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people"?

Was it just a coincidence that in 1975 when the Postal Service issued the stamp
honoring Haym Salomon, that same year the Israeli government issued a stamp
honoring Harry Truman, the American president who was the first head of state to
recognize Israel?

As Salomon believed, America has been that safe haven for the Jewish people, and
Israel has been reborn. As we celebrate America, may we remember the great debt
we owe to Haym Salomon. While we may not be able to repay him personally, we can
honor him by standing firm in our support and prayers for a strong and secure
Israel and a united Jerusalem under the rule of Haym's Salomon's spiritual
descendants, the Jewish people.

see also:
The Arab Revolt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%931939_Arab_revolt_in_Palestine<<The British responded to the violence by greatly expanding their military
forces and clamping down on Arab dissent. "Administrative detention"
(imprisonment without charges or trial), curfews, and house demolitions were
among British practices during this period. More than 120 Arabs were sentenced
to death and about 40 hanged. The main Arab leaders were arrested or expelled.
Amin al-Husayni fled from Palestine to escape arrest.

The mainstream Jewish military organization, the Haganah (Hebrew for "defense"),
actively supported British efforts to quell the largely peasant insurgency,
which reached 10,000 Arab fighters at their peak during the summer and fall of
1938. Although the British administration didn't officially recognize the
Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish
Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads. A smaller
Haganah splinter group, the Irgun organization (also called by its Hebrew
acronym Etzel), adopted a policy of retaliation and revenge (including against
civilians).[citation needed

Despite the assistance of 20,000 additional British troops and several thousand
Haganah men, the uprising continued for over two years. By the time it concluded
in March of 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 Britons had been
killed and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded[1].

================================================================
AFRICA
================================================================
I think this preserving-manuscripts-in-Timbuktu story makes
the rounds every year:

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
A Bronze Age 'sepentine mound' in England:

http://www.archaeology.eu.com/weblog/index.html
================================================================
ASIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC
================================================================
Somewhat vague report on finds from various periods in Lahore:

3. Charles
Bassett: Do Not Truth the Arabs!
Subject: Forum with Arab Nations

Dear Yair: I read in the paper here in the U.S. today that the Arab Nations were
going to meet with Israel to settle some of the problems between the Jewish
people and the Arabs. I would not trust them any farther than I could throw 100
lb weight as I could not even lift that. All they want is for Israel to give up
the West Bank along with the other territories that Israel won in the wars,
Israel should have annexed all of that territories when they captured it, and
should have knocked down that pagan Arab Mosque on the Temple Mount, I am sorry
that our leaders are always pushing Israel to do all of the land give away for
peace. That is plain stupid of our country. If Israel does all of these things
it will be a disaster. I know it easy for me to say this but the Word of God
pretty well confirms what I think. The best to you and your people. Charles
Bassett

1. Quotations from Niels
Bohr
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/niels_bohr.htmlWe all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?
How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making
progress.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may
very well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr.

Madonna drinks Canaan wine, Paris Hilton orders kosher steaks, Bono eats sushi
under the supervision of the Beth Din, Donald Trump holds his meetings at one of
Manhattan's kosher restaurants - and everyone burns calories to the tunes of
Sarit Haddad and Eyal Golan. Kosher is trendy in the USA
Yaniv Halili

When the queen of pop, Madonna, hears Sarit Haddad sing, it's hard for her to
constrain her excitement. It happens about once a week at the restaurant, Prime
Grill where Madonna eats her weekly glatt kosher meal. The patrons eat to the
sounds of Sarit Haddad and Shlomi Shabbat, while Madonna explains to her adopted
son David that one can eat a cow, not only play with it.

This latest American trend has celebrities enquiring about the coveted kashrut
seal before letting a morsel of food touch their mouths. Apart from Madonna (who
has a private room at the Prime Grill), many others are rushing around in search
of steaks from cows that were slaughtered under the supervision of a rabbi.

Just last week, the steaks at the Prime Grill in Hollywood breathed a sigh of
relief when Paris Hilton was incarcerated and the prison authorities refused to
allow a special delivery of kosher food to her cell. It's not clear what
attracts Hilton to kosher food; but what is clear is her being responsible for
making kosher food very trendy among Hollywood youth. And, as for its popularity
amongst business men, credit can be given to Donald Trump and Steven Spielberg.

A not very trendy 3300 years late, Americans are discovering that kosher food is
both healthy and spiritual. The subject is complex, but it is encouraging to
realize that we were right all these years and that it was worth insisting on
manna in the desert. New kosher restaurants are opening all the time in big
cities throughout the United States, offering dishes that have not been boiled
to death. Kosher products are finding themselves on supermarket shelves and
major producers in the dairy industry are strict about having the kosher stamp
on their product labels, knowing that the "gentiles" want kosher products too.
Even Hollywood is slowly turning kosher: the current most popular restaurant is
a kosher meat and sushi bar where paparazzi photographers have a permanent place
at the entrance.

Kosher Buddhism
Until recently, the words "kosher food" would have the average person running
away rather than meet the dubious culinary experience. These days the two words
mean prosperity. In Manhattan, kosher Chinese, French, Japanese, Indian and
Iranian restaurants have opened. There is even a kosher Buddhist restaurant -
indeed, Buddha spent his youth in a yeshiva.

In the last decad, kosher food sales in American supermarkets have reached a
growth rate of 15 percent as opposed to a four percent growth rate for food that
is not kosher. Eleven million Americans buy kosher food, and they are
responsible for a yearly turnover of $9 billion. What's interesting in all this
data is that there are only just over six million Jews in America and even fewer
keep kosher. Slowly but surely the kosher food market is being taken over by
non-Jewish Americans who are on the lookout for kosher food that is not just
gefilte fish and matza.

So, have the gentiles finally realized that Judaism is cool? Not necessarily so.
In a recent survey carried out by Mintel International, 55 percent of kosher
food consumers do so because they believe that kosher food is healthier, not due
to religious reasons. The health merits attached to the kashrut seal are
welcomed by mouths wide open: this last year Americans have had to swallow avian
flu, mass poisoning and E.Coli bacteria.

The American Health Department's statistics are scary: 76 million people - one
in four Americans - suffer each year from diseases caused by spoiled food. As
the numbers of diseases rise, so does people's awareness and conscious consumers
are on the look out for alternatives.

Kosher food is popular mostly amongst health food fans and strict vegetarians
who can eat at a dairy restaurant and be sure that no suspicious pieces of meat
will find their way into their plates and that they won't meet chunks of smoked
bacon in their salads.

Americans like the fact that kosher food is prepared under the watchful eyes of
supervisors, often more than one, and kosher restaurants in Manhattan are proud
to announce that "all the food here is prepared under strict supervision". This
impresses the customers, even if the watchful eyes are those of a kashrut
supervisor who is only making sure that the dairy and meat utensils stay
separate from each other.

A survey published just before Independence Day shows that Hebrew National
sausages made of 100 percent beef is the highest selling brand in America.
Muslims and Christians too are among Americans who eat kosher food. Certain
Christian groups follow a diet that is prepared "in the spirit of the Bible."

Kosher restaurants have exchanged the image of gefilte fish and matza to a more
exclusive, trendy image of good food. David Deutsch, the editor of the satirical
Jewish magazine "Heeb", says that each time he goes to a kosher restaurant he
sees more and more non-Jews. "People who don't keep kosher can choose to eat
anywhere, but they davka choose the kosher restaurants," says Deutsch.
"Sometimes I bump into owners of non-kosher restaurants eating at kosher
restaurants. Maybe they're spying or maybe they're just curious to know what the
buzz is all about."

And for dessert Eyal Golan
The kosher trend in New York got a big push last year when Madonna arrived in
the city for her Confessions tour. After each show, she packed up her dancers
and musicians and took them all to the Prime Grill for a steak. These intimate
gatherings got a lot of coverage by the local press and the fashion police
raised an eyebrow at the relatively unknown establishment that Madonna chose to
eat and party at. Madonna doesn't come to this restaurant only for its food; the
owners play Israeli music and are sure that the songs of Sarit Haddad will make
the desserts taste even sweeter. Madonna finds it hard to contain her
excitement.

Madonna is a sure bet for kosher food, but a rather more unexpected personality
who has found her happiness in kosher land is Paris Hilton. The idea that the
young heiress finds solace in something that is not studded with diamonds has
young Hollywood girls rushing to the Prime Grill in Beverly Hills. The tabloids
and entertainment TV shows were amazed when Hilton chose to celebrate her
birthday at the kosher sushi and meat bar. She invited 40 of her closest
friends, but 200 guests showed up. "She loves our sushi", admits the owner.
"Before her birthday she asked us to prepare a lot of sushi, but she was most
concerned about us baking a cake for her."

Even now, from the heights of the garbage dumps she's in, Hilton doesn't forget
where she came from and who fed her. Although her plea to bring kosher catering
to her jail cell didn't come through, two weeks ago during the embarrassing
fiasco when she was under house arrest, she celebrated her temporary freedom
feasting on kosher catering.

But even the huge amounts of kosher food that are going into Hilton's mouth
still don't qualify it as trendy. So Sasha Baron-Cohen ("Borat") steps in to
help. The English star probably leaves half his monthly salary at the Prime
Grill. Baron-Cohen is seen so often at the Hollywood branch of the Prime Grill
that the sight of a fork is rarer.

"Sasha eats only kosher food, so he has no choice", says the owner. "He loves
steaks and eats a lot, often complementing his meals with expensive, kosher
Israeli wine. He celebrated his Oscar nomination here with his fianc?e and a few
friends. But for Sasha, a meal is not a meal if it doesn't have Eyal Golan, Kobi
Peretz or Shlomi Shabbat singing in the background. He says these songs remind
him of Tel Aviv."

Signing deals over steaks
The celebrity-watch website TMZ.com reported that Donald Trump has connected to
his lost roots, and not the roots of his hair: Trump has turned the Manhattan
kosher restaurant Solo into his boardroom. Bono also pops in from time to time,
and when he's not snacking on flies in Africa, he keeps to his ideals and eats
only kosher or organic. When he dines at Solo he insists on ordering the salmon
in miso and at the Prime Rib he eats kosher sushi.

But, in spite of the star dust being sprinkled over kosher foods, some claim
that making kosher trendy is not a kosher thing to do. Most in the Jewish
community are not swayed by star dust and are against turning Judaism into "a
modern, trendy cult," says one of the heads of the rabbinical committee in
America, who choose to ignore the phenomenon. "This is just a fashion that will
soon disappear", he says. "Everything Jewish is suddenly popular, but after the
noise has quietened down and the storm has passed, only the core will remain,
but anyway, the core is what's important in Judaism."

There are also some who understand that the phenomenon is typical of the
American society, which adopts a new ritual every 15 minutes, heralds it as the
new king and discards it when the next trend starts to bloom. "Obviously Madonna
has played her part in making kosher trendy, but there is a wider issue of
self-searching at hand," says David Deutsch. "After Scientology and Buddhism,
it's now Judaism's turn. Judaism has been around for a long time and that makes
people ask how it's managed to last so long and wonder what its secret can be.
It's like a closed family where people want to peep inside and see the beauty."

But why kosher food now?
"The kosher trend fits in with modern life. Like the Kabbalah, it combines the
old with the new. Kosher food meets spirituality and health in one plate, and
that's what people are looking or today: a little spirituality with an everyday
practicality. Add to that the celeb quality and the fact that Hollywood has many
famous Jews that people want to imitate. It's very easy being Jewish in America
today."

ROB GILLIES IN TORONTO
Extract:
CANADA has announced plans to increase its Arctic military presence in an effort
to assert sovereignty over the North-west Passage - a potentially oil-rich
region previously regarded as international territory.

Stephen Harper, the prime minister, announced this week that six to eight patrol
ships will guard what he says are Canadian waters. A deep water port will also
be built in a region the US Geological Survey has estimated as holding as much
as 25 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.

8. Archaeology:Babylonian King's Eunuch Really Existed!
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123041 by Hillel FendelExtract:
Though the tablet was unearthed near Baghdad in 1920, only last week was it deciphered for the first time, by Dr. Jursa.
Upon reading the tablet, which records a donation of gold by "the chief eunuch of King Nebuchadnezzar," a man named Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, Jursa suddenly realized that the name sounded familiar. He quickly consulted Jeremiah 39, where he found the man's name listed as one of Nebuchadnezzar's top ministers who took part in the destruction of the First Holy Temple 2,500 years ago. The Biblical account, however, has his named spelled slightly differently: (Samgar) Nevo Sarsekim.

Abstract: The transatlantic slave trade lasted over three centuries and
represents one of the largest forced migrations in human history. The biological
repercussions are not well understood especially in African-Caribbean
populations. This paper explores the effects of the forced migration, isolation,
and admixture on genetic diversity using mitochondrial and Y chromosome markers
for 501 individuals from Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St.
Thomas, St. Vincent, and Trinidad. Genetic diversity and population genetic
structure analyses of mitochondrial data and Y chromosome data indicate that
there was no post-migration loss in genetic diversity in the African derived
lineages. Genetic structure was observed between the islands for both genetic
systems. This may be due to isolation, differences in the number and source of
Africans imported, depopulation of indigenous populations, and/or differences in
colonization history. Nearly 10% of the individuals belonged to a non-African
mitochondrial haplogroup. In contrast, Y chromosome admixture estimates showed
that there was nearly 30% European contribution to these Caribbean populations.
This study sheds light on the history of Africans in the Americas as well as
contributing to our understanding of the nature and extent of diversity within
the African Diaspora.

1. China to Build
Refinery in Syria
Guysen Israel News
2007-07-11 , 25 Tammuz 5767
08:19 China is going to build an oil refinery in Syria capable of handling
70,000 barrels of crude daily. According to the Chinese media an agreement for
this purpose was signed in Peking between the Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao
and the Syrian vice foreign minister Abdallah Dardari. (Guysen.International.News)

2.British
Journalists Cancel Boycott of Israeli Products
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/129800(IsraelNN.com) The British National Union of Journalists has cancelled a
planned boycott of Israeli products following widespread criticism from
colleagues in other countries. Instead, the organization called on members "to
unite behind the union?s key workplace priorities."

Other British unions have continued boycott efforts, but several e-mail
campaigns have noted that banning Israeli products would leave people without
computers, cell phones and prescription drugs.

Extract:
(IsraelNN.com) An Israeli social justice movement has established a
certification system to award restaurants for ?kosher? treatment of employees
and the disabled.

Bema-aglei Tzedek, a Jerusalem based non-profit organization, has established a
system for altering consumers to positive employment practices and accessibility
for the disabled through a system resembling that with which Kosher
certification is displayed.

Employee Theft is a Serious ProblemDid You Know?
http://www.smartsecuritycamera.com/services.htmlAccording to the University of Florida 2005 National Retail Security Report:
(This is the latest publication)
As was the case last year, retailers again attributed 47% of their inventory
shrinkage to employee theft. Assuming a total shrinkage dollar amount of
approximately $37.4 billion, this translates into an annual employee theft tag
of $17.6 billion. This is a staggering monetary loss to come from a single crime
type. In fact, there is no other form of larceny that annually costs American
citizens more money than employee theft.

2. US Congress to
Hold Hearing on Jewish Refugees From Arab States
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123047
Extract:
"There were two major population movements that occurred during years of great
turmoil in the Middle East, from 1948 to 1968." Arabs and Jews were "both
determined to be bona fide refugees under international law. In fact, more
former Jewish refugees were uprooted from Arab countries (over 850,000) than
Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 (UN estimate: 726,000)."

(IsraelNN.com) A four-day International Conference of Descendants of the
biblical figure Aaron, the Priestly Tribe (Kohanim) and the whole Tribe of Levi
to which the Kohanim are a part, begins on Sunday, July 15.
"Bring forth Aharon's sons".Then anoint them, just as you anointed their father,
so that they will be Kohanim ("priests") to Me. It will be done so that their
anointing will make them an eternal [hereditary] priesthood for all generations.
Moses proceeded to do exactly as G-d had commanded him.? (Exodus 40:14, 15)
Throughout Jewish history and to this day, Jews are careful to note which
families belong to the tribe of Levi and the priestly family of Aaron. At the
special gathering this week in Jerusalem, they will learn more about their roots
and discuss the latest research proving their genetic ties.
The International Conference of Kohanim and the Tribe of Levi falls on the first
day of the Hebrew month of Av and the beginning of the nine-day period leading
up to Tisha B'Av, the second-most solemn fast day in the Jewish calendar.
It is also the date on which Aharon the High Priest, brother of Moses left this
world to enter the World to Come.
Recent scientific research and DNA testing has allegedly proven a genetic
connection between the descendants of the Tribe of Levi, the biblical priests
and their assistants who began with the sons of Aharon.
Project director Professor Karl Skorecki, one of the main researchers in the
seminal "Kohen Genetic Signature" study, is scheduled to present the findings
Monday, July 16 at 11:30 a.m. in "HaKotel Hall" auditorium, near the Western
Wall Plaza.
"This is not only the first family reunion of the Jewish priestly dynasty in
nearly 2,000 years," said conference organizer Rabbi Yaakov Kleiman in a
statement sent to the media. ?The research and information we will share will
play an important role in appreciating and maintaining our unique and precious
heritage.? Rabbi Kleiman is the director of The Center for Kohanim in Jerusalem
and the author of "DNA & Tradition."
Molecular geneticists have recently discovered the "Kohen Modal Haplotype," a
Y-chromosome DNA lineage signature shared by a majority of both Ashkenazic and
Sephardic Kohanim.
This indicates direct patrilineal descent of present-day Kohanim from an ancient
ancestor, genetically dated to have lived approximately 3,000 years ago,
corresponding to the time of the Exodus from Egypt.
Kohanim and other "members of the tribe," the Levi'im (Levites), are being
invited to participate in what has been billed as the "first family reunion"
held since the days of the Temple in Jerusalem.?
Four days of seminars, touring, presentations of the latest research and
lectures by leading rabbis and scientists on such topics as genetic genealogy,
biblical history and contemporary issues in the Jewish legal arena will be
offered in English as well as Hebrew.

http://medarch.blogspot.com/
================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
Finds from various periods at a site outside Durham City:

http://www.nzarchaeology.org/netsubnews.htm
================================================================
NORTH AMERICA
================================================================
An ancient massacre/genocide site in New Mexico:

http://tinyurl.com/2sro9x
(BBC)
================================================================
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
================================================================
On the antiquity of 'Mexican Cuisine':

Extract:
At the same time, Israel must consider the pros and cons for its strategic
position of filling a front-line role in the American missile shield planned for
the east European countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Israel is seen to
solidly side with America against Moscow with applications for the inter-power
contest over influence and oil and gas markets in the Middle East and Central
Asia. This contest is beginning to be called ?Cold War Two.?

Russian president Vladimir Putin has made his campaign against the deployment of
US interceptor missiles in East Europe the main theme of his foreign policy and
confronted Washington with an ultimatum: if the US goes through with the
deployment of missiles in Poland and radar stations in the Czech Republic,
Moscow will develop missiles capable of busting them.

In a fresh arms race between America and Russia focusing on anti-missile
interceptors, Israel as an integral component of the US system could find itself
threatened by Moscow?s sales to Iran and Syria of hardware designed to knock out
its own anti-missile defenses.

Thomas Haury[Extracts]
" Nonofficial chronologies of NGOs give evidence of a
considerable extent of anti-Semitic graffiti and destruction in East
Germany. They are directed against concentration-camp memorials,
commemorative plaques, or other tokens of Jewish victims of National
Socialism, but also against Jewish institutions and cemeteries. Several
recent anti-Semitic incidents in East Germany have even attracted the
attention of the international media.

" An extensive and deeply rooted right-wing subculture exists in
the five new German federal states. These states comprise almost 20
percent of the German population but, also, almost 50 percent of the
potentially violent right-wing extremists.

" In the last two parliamentary elections for East German federal
states, the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)
achieved significant success. The NPD's extreme nationalism includes the
rehabilitation of National Socialism.

" Anti-Semitic attitudes are also widespread in West Germany. In
all of Germany and not only on the extreme Right, anti-Semitism is
expressed increasingly openly and aggressively.

The Tip of the Iceberg

Several recent anti-Semitic incidents in East Germany have attracted the
attention of the international media. In June 2006, the extreme
right-wing society Heimatbund Ostelbien organized "midsummer
celebrations" with seventy participants in the small municipality of
Pretzien. Later that evening the young men of the Heimatbund lit a
"midsummer bonfire" and one of them shouted: "He who has something to
put in the fire that is alien to our kind may do so now!" An American
flag was thrown in to burn, shortly after an edition of The Diary of
Anne Frank. Dozens of bystanders watched passively including the mayor
of the municipality, who is a member both of the SED1 follow-up party
PDS and the Heimatbund.2

In September 2006 in the amateur District League B, the Jewish soccer
team TuS Makkabi Berlin played East Berlin VSR Altglienicke. The match
had hardly begun when ten or fifteen VSR supporters began shouting
epithets such as "Synagogues must burn," "Auschwitz revisited," and "Gas
the Jews." The Jewish players asked the referee several times to
intervene, but he did not do so and claimed not to have heard anything.
When finally the Makkabi players took him to task, the referee sent
their captain off the field, after which the Makkabi players left the
field as one.3

In the small municipality of Parey in October 2006, three boys aged
fourteen to sixteen forced a fellow student during the break to wear a
placard saying "I am the biggest swine in the place, I only hang around
with Jews" and to walk across the schoolyard with it.4 All over Germany
more and more students reportedly stigmatize others as weak by shouting
"You victim, you Jew!" Right-wing and Muslim students in particular are
said to be responsible for the word Jew becoming a "fashionable insult."5

Slogans, Graffiti, Destruction

These only represent the most extreme among almost daily anti-Semitic
incidents. About every ten days a Jewish cemetery is desecrated. In
2005, the police all over Germany registered a total of 1,658
anti-Semitic offenses (a rise of 26 percent over 2004), primarily
involving banned propaganda but also including forty-nine acts of
violence (+32 percent). This is part of a general increase of extreme
right-wing offenses to 15,361 (+23.5 percent), again mainly propaganda
but including 958 acts (+23.5 percent, mostly involving bodily harm) of
violence mostly against those identified as "foreigners" or "left-wing
people." Relative to population size, the five new federal states occupy
the top ranks regarding right-wing acts of violence: these states
comprise almost 20 percent of the German population but, also, almost 50
percent of the potentially violent right-wing extremists.

There are no figures for the regional distribution of anti-Semitic
offenses and acts of violence.6

Nonofficial chronologies of NGOs give evidence of a considerable extent
of anti-Semitic graffiti and destruction in East Germany.7 They are
directed against concentration-camp memorials, commemorative plaques, or
other tokens of Jewish victims of National Socialism, but also against
Jewish institutions and cemeteries. Swastikas or slogans such as "Don't
buy from Jews!" and "Jews out!" are sprayed on the walls of houses and
cemeteries, on memorials and gravestones. Commemoration plaques are
damaged and gravestones are toppled.

Soccer fans may be taken as a seismograph. The past few years have seen,
all over Germany, a clear increase of extreme-Right, racist, and
anti-Semitic slogans, particularly in the lower divisions and at East
German matches. Unpopular decisions by referees often evoke the chorus
"Referee-Jew!" Fans of the rival team are also called Jews. In December
2005 during a match between Dynamo Dresden (DD) and Energie Cottbus, the
Cottbus fans unfurled a huge banner with "Jews" on it in Gothic capital
letters. To the right and to the left was a Star of David, and at their
center was written "DD."8 In February 2007 during a match between 1. FC
Lok Leipzig and Erzgebirge Aue II, the Leipzig fans shouted slogans such
as "Aue Jews!" or "Aue and Chemie-Jewish company!," Chemie referring to
another team the Lok Leipzig fans dislike. During another match the
Leipzig fans arranged themselves in the form of a swastika in the stands.

East Germany's Extreme-Right Youth Subculture

Extreme right-wing offenses, the atmosphere at soccer matches, and
events at schoolyards show that in the new German federal states there
exists-particularly in rural regions and in small towns-an extensive,
deeply rooted right-wing subculture. It reaches from neo-Nazis organized
in so-called Free Comradeships through skinheads to a broader ambience
of extreme right-wing values, most of all among young people. In many
places shops sell clothes and other accessories of the subculture, CDs
of right-wing rock bands, and relevant fanzines. In many schools this
subculture has become predominant. In many areas people looking
"foreign" or "left-wing" lead a dangerous life, particularly in the
evening.

Anti-Semitism is an integral part of this subculture. This is
particularly evident in the lyrics of right-wing bands. For example, the
CD Zyklon D-Frontalangriff by the Dessau hip-hop group DissauCrime,
which was sentenced for incitement in May 2006, includes the lyrics: "I
shoot with my flak at the Jewish pack."9

Skinhead concerts, right-wing music labels, and distribution structures
are centered in East Germany. Because of legal persecution, however,
most of the CDs are produced in the United States and smuggled to
Germany from there. One CD by the band Kommando Freisler says in the
song "Judenschwein" (Jewish Swine): "Jew...you better flee when the
brown-clad are roaming in the streets. Every child in Germany knows that
Jews are only for heating." In the song "Der ewige Jude" (Eternal Jew)
on a CD of the same title, the band Volkszorn sings: "Eternal Jew, he is
still around. Eternal Jew, the worldwide danger. He poisons and bribes
the entire wide world. The Jew must die or our days are numbered."10

Success of the Neo-Nazi NPD in East German Elections

In the last two parliamentary elections for East German federal states,
the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) achieved significant
success. In 2004 in Saxony it won 9.2 percent of the votes; in 2006 in
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 7.3 percent. In some small municipalities it
even became the strongest party. The NPD particularly attracts young
people with a low level of education: in Saxony, 21 percent of voters
aged eighteen to twenty-four voted NPD, and for those under thirty-five
with only basic secondary education the figure was 26 percent.

This success for the NPD-for decades an unimportant party winning less
than 1 percent of votes-also reflects the modernization and
radicalization of its politics and propaganda. First, the NPD focuses
its work on East Germany. Second, it has opened up toward explicitly
neo-Nazi individuals and groups (such as the grassroots, unofficial
Kameradschaften). Thus, the "left-wing"-v"lkische,
national-revolutionary tendency within the NPD has clearly gained in
importance.

Third, the NPD cultivates the image of a "people-oriented" middle-class
party. By cooperating with schools and citizens' groups, organizing
children's events and leisure activities, and offering free private
tuition for students, the NPD deepens its local roots. Fourth, it has
successfully made contacts with the right-wing youth subculture. It
distributes free right-wing rock CDs at schools, projects an
activist-rebellious image for the NPD youth organization Junge
Nationaldemokraten, and offers concerts by skinhead bands after NPD events.

Fifth, in the context of its increasingly national-revolutionary
orientation the NPD also adopts current topics and increasingly uses
anticapitalist and anti-imperialist terminology. In East Germany, in
2005, it joined massive protests against cuts in unemployment support,
while adopting aggressive populist propaganda against "those at the top"
who did nothing for the "ordinary German." The NPD also mobilized
against the Iraq war of "U.S. imperialism," its fierce anti-Americanism
finding much sympathy. The NPD agitates massively against "capitalist
globalization." Employing slogans such as "Work for millions instead of
profit for millionaires" or "Social instead of global," it calls instead
for a national "people's economy" and for "Volksgemeinschaft" (people's
community)."11

The NPD also seeks to rehabilitate National Socialism. Party chairman
Udo Voigt considers Hitler "undoubtedly...a great German statesman."13
The NPD member of Saxony's federal-state parliament, J"rgen Gansel,
cites a "just economic order," "national sovereignty," and "internal
pacification" as great achievements of National Socialism.14 At the same
time the NPD vehemently denies, minimizes, and relativizes German
crimes, and it agitated against the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with
slogans such as "Kindergartens and old-age homes instead of a Holocaust
Memorial" and "Stop the memorial! Seventy-six million for the people!"15

For the NPD, the Allies were the true warmongers and the Germans the
real victims of World War II. In January 2005, on the anniversary of the
Allied air raid on Dresden, the NPD members of the Saxony parliament
spoke of the "bomb-Holocaust of Dresden" stemming from British
"eliminatory anti-Germanism," of "industrial mass murder of the civilian
population that was planned in cold blood." They said a memorial for
German victims should be built instead of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.16

Anti-Semitism in NPD Propaganda

Although open anti-Semitism is prohibited in Germany, the NPD uses it in
only slightly moderated form throughout its propaganda. Mostly the NPD
presents Jews as the main obstacle to putting German crimes aside and
building a proud "national identity." A member of the NPD executive stated:

We are not to be pseudo-morally blackmailed, politically treated like
children, and financially squeezed dry by the Holocaust industry...sixty
years after the end of the war.... No German needs to put up with the
Jews constantly presenting themselves as victims and the cult of guilt
that the Jewish side has exercised for sixty years. Similarly, the
psychological warfare by Jewish power groups against the German people
must be stopped immediately.17

Of course, the NPD is also hostile to the Jewish state.
"Jews and
Americans who are driven to the same extent by Old Testament hatred of
other peoples and the belief in chosenness," "Jewish-America," and
"USrael" are said to be foisting their "neoprimitive dollar
civilization" on the world, with "the Jews" intending to "build up
'Eretz Israel' through a campaign of extinction against the Arabs."24

Notwithstanding the NPD's usual hostility to foreigners and Islam, all
Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel are guaranteed its solidarity. The
party particularly approves Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
because of his threats to annihilate Israel and his recent
Holocaust-denial conference. As for Iran's earlier Holocaust-cartoon
contest, the NPD submitted a caricature showing the Berlin Holocaust
Memorial as an Israeli missile launching site.

Most of the surveys show attitudes of
hostility to foreigners, racism, authoritarianism, and rejection of
democracy to be much more widespread in East than in West Germany. Until
the mid-1990s, however, the percentage of people expressing
anti-Semitism in the new federal states was surprisingly less than half
what it was in West Germany. Hostility to Israel also was no more
intense than in West Germany, even though it had been propagated by the
East German state.

Since the end of the 1990s, however, most studies show a new trend.
Whereas in West Germany a constant figure of almost 20 percent hold
anti-Semitic attitudes, in the new federal states anti-Semitism has
steadily been rising toward the West German level. Secondary
anti-Semitism in particular, which involves resisting feelings of guilt
about the German past, is on the increase in East Germany. Furthermore,
some surveys found anti-Semitism to be especially pronounced among
younger East Germans, whereas for decades in West Germany it has been
the older cohorts who are more anti-Semitic.

The Situation Overall

However, the influence of the SED state should not be exaggerated. In
September 2004, in the elections in the West German state of Saarland,
the NPD won 4 percent of the votes and 9 percent among those aged
eighteen to twenty-nine. For the September 2005 Bundestag elections, the
NPD won 4 percent of the votes of those aged eighteen to twenty-four
throughout Germany.

Anti-Semitic attitudes in particular are widespread in West Germany.
Despite democracy, Israel-friendly policy and media, and attention to
the Shoah in schools and media, some studies find higher percentages
with anti-Semitic views in West than in East Germany.30 The debates on
German guilt initiated by Martin Walser, J"rgen M"llemann, Martin
Hohmann, and others, which are laced with anti-Semitism, are West German
phenomena. In a 2003 poll, 54 percent of West Germans agreed with the
statement: "Today the Jews exploit the memory of the Holocaust for their
own advantage"; in East Germany, 45 percent agreed.31

In all of Germany, and not only on the extreme Right, anti-Semitism is
expressed increasingly openly and aggressively. Charlotte Knobloch,
chairwoman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, remarked in 2007:
"It seems as if in Germany a last taboo is falling.... From the
invective letters that reach the Jewish communities, we can see that
senders also come from the educated classes."32

State pension funds in Texas are being given the opportunity to voluntarily
divest from companies doing business with Iran in a move to encourage them to
avoid supporting a terrorist country.

If Republican Governor Rick Perry"s efforts fail to persuade the companies to
divest on their own, however, he is prepared to work toward official measures to
force them to make the move.

"This is a country (Iran) that has a clear terrorist focus, has a clear mission
to wipe a friendly democracy and a very close ally of the United States off of
the face of the earth," said Perry on Wednesday.

The Texas governor met last month with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Opposition
Leader MK Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) during his visit to Israel last month to
accept a "Friend of Zion" award from Global Capital Associates.

The case for divesting from firms doing business with Iran was made by
Netanyahu, a former Finance Minister and Prime Minister.

Perry said he would convene a special session of the state legislature if he
cannot begin divestment proceedings without passing a bill for the purpose. A
law that included divestment from Iran was nixed by the legislature several
months ago.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the destruction
of the Jewish State and last year vowed to "wipe Israel off the map."

Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson said in an interview published Wednesday in
the Houston Chronicle that the amount of money in possible divestment could
total "hundreds of millions of dollars." Wilson accompanied the governor and
attended the meetings with Israeli officials.

The Republican governor signed a bill passed by the legislature earlier this
year ordering the state"s Teacher Retirement and Employees Retirement funds to
divest from companies doing business with Sudan, due to the continuing genocide
in Darfur.

The father of a teenager murdered by Arab terrorists has expressed outrage at
the government"s decision to release 256 terrorists from prison and grant
amnesty to 178 others as a "good will" gesture to the Palestinian Authority.
Malka Chana "Malki" Roth died at the young age of 15 in a suicide bombing at the
Sbarro pizza restaurant, which shook the capital in 2001. Fifteen people were
murdered and more than 100 wounded in the attack.
Malki's father Arnold Roth charged in an exclusive interview with Arutz-7,
"Beyond the pain, there is a deepening sense of betrayal and abandonment. Ffrom
the first moment, it has been evident to us that there is an agenda among many
of our politicians and leaders to erase the memory of the lives of the...
victims and of their deaths."
Roth and his wife Frimet were equally disturbed at the HBO promotion of the
film, "Hot House," an Israeli-produced documentary exploring the conditions
inside Israel"s prisons.
There are times when the movie moguls promote their products in ways that can be
considered in poor taste, and this was one of them.
A close-up shot of a healthy-looking young woman, her hair demurely tucked away
in a scarf, is one shining example. The photo, which accompanied a New York
Times movie review of the film "Hot House," is a shot of the young woman who
drove a 22-year-old suicide terrorist to his target in Jerusalem several years
ago.
One of many interviews featured in the documentary on Palestinian Authority
prisoners in Israeli jails featured the young woman, former PA TV newscaster
Ahlam Tamimi, whose smiling face accompanied the Times review.
"That female is our child"s murderer," responded Roth.
Tamimi told journalists last year, "I"m not sorry for what I did. We"ll become
free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison."
Roth noted that "With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist
prisoners, small wonder [Tamimi] is smiling."
"Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment"s attention
to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro's restaurant in
Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims," he continued. "She was unable to
reach her twenties " Hamas saw to that."
Roth also condemned the government"s ongoing negotiations in a prisoner swap
involving hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails, in exchange for the return of
IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from Gaza more than
a year ago.
"Like almost every last Israeli, we long to see Gilad Shalit free, along with
the other MIA's and kidnapped servicemen. But that longing does not come at the
expense of the deepest reservations we feel about what it will mean to Israeli
society to free the murderers," said Roth. "We know the pain of being without
our child. We wish it on no one."
Malki"s parents channeled their grief into a project that transforms the sadness
of others into relief, and even joy. The Malki Foundation ("Keren Malki" in
Hebrew) honors their teen daughter"s memory by helping families who care at home
for their special-needs children.
Click here to view photos of Malki"s short life and to learn more about what is
being done in her memory to help families of children with special needs.

A vivid exhibition tracing the history and experience of the Bnei Anousim (Jews
who hid their identity for fear of persecution) over the past five centuries
opened this week at the Jewish Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the first of
four stops it will be making as it tours the vast South American country.
The exhibition, entitled "Crypto-Jews: The Flame
that the Inquisition Could Not Extinguish," was designed and produced by Shavei
Israel (www.shavei.org), a
Jerusalem-based group that reaches out and assists "lost Jews" seeking to return
to the Jewish people.
It includes a wide array of maps, illustrations and photographs, with
explanatory panels in Hebrew and Portuguese that tell the story of the Bnei
Anousim and their struggle over the centuries to preserve their Jewish identity.
It has previously been shown in Israel and in Spain.
"Bnei Anousim" is the Hebrew term for people whose ancestors were forcibly
converted to Catholicism during the time of the Inquisition. Historians have
often referred to them as "crypto-Jews" or by the derogatory term "Marranos."
(The word "crypto" means "secret.")

"In recent years, growing numbers of Bnai Anousim throughout the Spanish and
Portuguese-speaking world have actively been seeking to reconnect with Israel
and the Jewish people," said Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund.

"Despite being one of the most heroic and painful chapters in all of Jewish
history, the saga of the Bnei Anousim is neither well-known nor sufficiently
appreciated by world Jewry, and we aim to change that," he said.

"It is time for the Jewish people to embrace the Bnei Anousim and welcome them
home, and for this issue to receive the attention that it so rightly deserves,"
said Freund, who is currently writing a book on the subject.

With an eye toward local audiences, the exhibition highlights the arrival of
Portuguese crypto-Jews in Brazil beginning in the 16th century, and describes
the horrific persecution they endured at the hands of the Inquisition. Those
suspected of practicing Judaism in secret were often sent back to Portugal for
trial, where they were frequently burned at the stake in public ceremonies.

The exhibition will be on display at the Museu Judaico do Rio de Janeiro through
July 23. From there it will travel to Belo Horizonte, where it will appear from
August 2 to August 16, before heading north to the Amazonian cities of Manaus
(August 9 to August 20) and Belem (August 27 to September 6).
For further information, or to arrange for the exhibition to appear in your
community, contact: office@shavei.org.

[6. NETANYA:
NO PORK AND HAM SOLD IN RESIDENTIAL AREAS
by Hillel Fendel

The seaside municipality of Netanya, Israel's 8th largest city, has banned the
sale of pig meat in residential and tourist areas. The "other thing," as pig
meat is often known in Judaism, may be sold only in two outlying industrial
zones.
The Netanya City Council convened on Tuesday, in light of sharp protests against
the opening of a giant supermarket that planned to sell pork. Between 50 and 70
stores sell pork products in the city center, and most of their customers are
new immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Some 40% of those immigrants
brought to Israel by the Jewish Agency are not considered Jewish according to
Jewish Law.
The opening of the latest store sparked particularly strong opposition, and some
religious Jews even chained themselves to the store's doors on Sunday. In a
quickly called session, the City Council voted 12-3 to forbid the opening of new
pork-selling stores and close down existing ones. Half of the council members
are religiously observant.
Mayor Miriam Feierberg, who did not object to the bill, said that the issue is
actually one for the Knesset, not city councils. She called upon the national
legislature to pass a law forbidding the sale of non-kosher meat in Israel.
Opposition councilman Boris Tzirulnik, and others, said they would appeal the
decision to the Supreme Court.
MK Yossi Beilin, of the far-left Meretz party, said the decision is "legal but
piggish."

4. Proverbs
8:22-36
[Proverbs 8:22] THE LORD POSSESSED ME IN THE BEGINNING OF HIS WAY, BEFORE HIS
WORKS OF OLD.
The Divine Plan was laid out before Creation.

[Proverbs 8:23] I WAS SET UP FROM EVERLASTING, FROM THE BEGINNING, OR EVER THE
EARTH WAS.
Everything has a purpose established from before the beginning. It is all
according to plan. We must learn to recognize and acknowledge Divine
Providence.

[Proverbs 8:24] WHEN THERE WERE NO DEPTHS, I WAS BROUGHT FORTH; WHEN THERE WERE
NO FOUNTAINS ABOUNDING WITH WATER.

[Proverbs 8:25] BEFORE THE MOUNTAINS WERE SETTLED, BEFORE THE HILLS WAS I
BROUGHT FORTH:

[Proverbs 8:26] WHILE AS YET HE HAD NOT MADE THE EARTH, NOR THE FIELDS, NOR THE
HIGHEST PART OF THE DUST OF THE WORLD.

[Proverbs 8:27] WHEN HE PREPARED THE HEAVENS, I WAS THERE: WHEN HE SET A
COMPASS UPON THE FACE OF THE DEPTH:
<<HE SET A COMPASS>>: Hebrew: "be-chooko choog" literally when HE set the law of
the circle (or round sphere) translated by Yehonatan into Aramaic as meaning,
"He made the spherical dome".

[Proverbs 8:28] WHEN HE ESTABLISHED THE CLOUDS ABOVE: WHEN HE STRENGTHENED THE
FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP:

[Proverbs 8:29] WHEN HE GAVE TO THE SEA HIS DECREE, THAT THE WATERS SHOULD NOT
PASS HIS COMMANDMENT: WHEN HE APPOINTED THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE
EARTH:

[Proverbs 8:30] THEN I WAS BY HIM, AS ONE BROUGHT UP WITH HIM: AND I WAS DAILY
HIS DELIGHT, REJOICING ALWAYS BEFORE HIM;

[Proverbs 8:31] REJOICING IN THE HABITABLE PART OF HIS EARTH; AND MY DELIGHTS
WERE WITH THE SONS OF MEN.

[Proverbs 8:32] NOW THEREFORE HEARKEN UNTO ME, O YE CHILDREN: FOR BLESSED ARE
THEY THAT KEEP MY WAYS.
The Divine Plan is the blueprint of Creation. When we do the will of the
Almighty we are in tune with nature, or rather nature itself plays to our tune
since we are in tune with God.

[Proverbs 8:33] HEAR INSTRUCTION, AND BE WISE, AND REFUSE IT NOT.
Good advice and practical wisdom is free and often plentiful. Most of us
disregard or do not realize its availability until it is tooo late or appears to
be too late.

[Proverbs 8:34] BLESSED IS THE MAN THAT HEARETH ME, WATCHING DAILY AT MY GATES,
WAITING AT THE POSTS OF MY DOORS.
It is never really too lost. You can always make it better to some degree or
other very often altogether so.

[Proverbs 8:35] FOR WHOSO FINDETH ME FINDETH LIFE, AND SHALL OBTAIN FAVOUR OF
THE LORD.
The will of God as revealed in the Bible is the true Gift of Life.
We do not always have the ability to pray or feel the closeness of the Almighty.
When however these moments of favor come to us we should take advantage of
them.

[Proverbs 8:36] BUT HE THAT SINNETH AGAINST ME WRONGETH HIS OWN SOUL: ALL THEY
THAT HATE ME LOVE DEATH.
Sin causes death. They who do evil hurt others and themselves. Sin has no
romance.

Greeff JM.
Department of Genetics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa.
It is often assumed that Afrikaners stem from a small number of Dutch
immigrants. As a result they should be genetically homogeneous, show founder
effects and be rather inbred. By disentangling my own South African pedigree,
that is on average 12 generations deep, I try to quantify the genetic heritage
of an Afrikaner. As much as 6% of my genes have been contributed by slaves from
Africa, Madagascar and India, and a woman from China. This figure compares well
to other genetic and genealogical estimates. Seventy three percent of my
lineages coalesce into common founders, and I am related in excess of 10 times
to 20 founder ancestors (30 times to Willem Schalk van der Merwe). Significant
founder effects are thus possible. The overrepresentation of certain founder
ancestors is in part explained by the fact that they had more children. This is
remarkable given that they lived more than 300 years (or 12 generations) ago.
DECONSTRUCT, a new program for pedigree analysis, identified 125 common
ancestors in my pedigree. However, these common ancestors are so distant from
myself, paths of between 16 and 25 steps in length, that my inbreeding
coefficient is not unusually high (f (approx) 0.0019).Jerusalem News-649
7 Ab 5767, 22 July 2007
Contents:1. US Army Rabbi
Subjected to Nazi Anti-Semitism by Military Chaplains

According to documents obtained by Truthout, an investigation by the Army
Inspector General into Goldman's claims of anti-Semitism shows that in May 2001,
Captain Robert Nay, a Christian chaplain at the Fort Stewart Army base, hung
Nazi uniforms and swastikas on the wall of the officers' club at Hunter Army
Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, during a May 23, 2001 interfaith prayer breakfast
Goldman was ordered to attend.

In an interview, Goldman said seeing the Nazi uniforms did not entirely
surprise him. A month earlier, Nay had informed Goldman that he thought it would
be "funny" if he dressed up soldiers in the Nazi uniforms on Holocaust Memorial
Day, a time when the world memorializes the six million Jews who were
slaughtered by the Nazis during World War II...

Goldman says he complained about Nay's anti-Semitic tirades to his Fort
Stewart chaplain supervisor, Major Larry Sharp. In a sworn affidavit, Goldman
said Sharp told him that he "needed to get along with people who hate Jews."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose people in Iran by a 6-4 majority are in
support of having him removed from power by foreign military action
A new survey reveals that 92 percent of the subjects of Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's totalitarian government do not believe their nation's
role is positive, and two-thirds would support a "Velvet Revolution" to
remove him from power.

The survey, by the Center For the Promotion of Democracy and Human Rights,
found that almost six out of 10 Iranians would support a foreign military
action for the purpose of taking Ahmadinejad out of the role as dictator.

"There is clearly a huge distinction between the Islamic Republic of Iran
and its intentions as a regime and its people," reported Said Jabbari, a
senior analyst with the center.

"As a totalitarian regime it does not represent the aspirations of the
Iranian people," he said. "Don't use 'Iran' and 'this regime' to represent
each other."

"We need to create such a huge distinction. We never referred to Nazis as
Germans. We clearly wanted to create a distinction between Germans and
Nazis," he said. In this instance, Jabbari said, "we need to turn around and
say the Islamic Republic regime, and the Iranian people, have two different
paths."

He noted that another recent survey, done by Terror Free Tomorrow, produced
nearly the same results.

"Through both surveys, what comes out loud and clear is the fact that the
people of Iran neither approve of their government's policies nor of its
structure. Indeed in the CFPD poll 67 percent said they would support a
'Velvet Revolution' for the removal of the regime and 58 percent went as far
as saying that they would support a foreign military action for the purpose
of changing the regime," Jabbari said.

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, has said he expects both Jesus and the Shiite
messianic figure, Imam Mahdi, to return and "wipe away oppression."

Ahmadinejad also has been urging Iranians to prepare for the coming of the
Mahdi by turning the country into a powerful and advanced Islamic society
and by avoiding the corruption and excesses of the West.

He sees his main mission, as he recounted in a Nov. 16, 2005, speech in
Tehran, being to "pave the path for the glorious reappearance of Imam Mahdi,
may Allah hasten his reappearance."

With Iran's continued development of nuclear technology in defiance of the
West, some analysts fear Ahmadinejad's intent is to trigger the kind of
global conflagration he envisions will set the stage for the end of the
world.

He has also described the Nazi Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel
to be wiped off the map.

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union
was, and humanity will achieve freedom." he said.

The CFPD study was developed with the advice of a long list of experts, and
was done during the second quarter of 2007 by students hired inside Iran to
ask the questions.

The results came from a random sampling of 600 responders from Tehran,
Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz and Mahabad, with the male-female ratio split
320-280.

The respondents were equally divided among the following age groups: 20-30,
30-50, and over 50.

"Being proud and nationalistic, Iranians overwhelmingly want to have access
to nuclear technology, including military nuclear technology," the study
said. "But a plurality does not want the current regime to have the nuclear
bomb and does not trust its pronouncements to the effect that it is not
pursuing such technology."

Iranians also oppose their government's support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and
disagree with Ahmadinejad's expressed desire to eliminate Israel.
Among the questions, and their responses:

"Perhaps the most important elements in both surveys were the implications
they contained about attitudes towards the regime," Jabbari said. The TFT
results show 61 percent opposed their current government, 79 percent said
they wanted a democracy and "only 11 percent said they would strongly oppose
having a political system in which all of their leaders, including the
supreme leader are chosen by popular election."

"The CFPD survey went even further," Jabbari noted. "Fully 72 percent of
Iranians said given the chance to go back they will not support an 'Islamic
Revolution.' Sixty-seven percent do not consider the Islamic Republic to be
a political system that satisfies the needs of the Iranian people."

He said 61 percent opposed the government's support for Hezbollah, 56
percent opposed support for Hamas, 70 percent did not advocate the
destruction of Israel and two out of three disagreed with Ahmadinejad's
claims casting doubt on the Holocaust.

The TFT survey was done by telephone from outside Iran, while the CFPD
assessment was done in face-to-face interviews inside Iran.

"We . believe that the logical conclusion of both surveys is for the West to
stop confusing the people of Iran with talks of engaging the very regime
that Iranians consider to be extremely suppressive, incompetent and corrupt,
and instead focus its attention on isolating that regime and supporting the
people of Iran," Jabbari said.

"In pursuing our national security objectives in the region, our biggest
assets are the interests we share with the people of Iran. Based on the
facts uncovered by both surveys it would appear that clear cut Western
support for democratic movements inside Iran, coupled with a policy of
isolating that regime on the diplomatic and economic fronts, are not just
welcome by the Iranian people but may indeed prove to be the only remedy for
avoiding the need for military action against the Iranian regime."

The survey showed that 64 percent of Iranians believe there will be war to
stop the nation's nuclear program, but only 14 percent believe Europe would
participate in that. Forty-three percent of Iranians would support a
military strike against the nuclear program, and 58 percent would support a
military action to change the regime.

Only 32 percent said the Iranian political system satisfies the needs of
Iranians, and only 43 percent said a "reformed" Iran could do that.

Jabbari told WND the Iranian people's nationalism was evident, but just as
evident was the distrust they have for their government.

"They feel nobody has the right to come and tell Iran and Iranians that they
don't have the right to have nuclear technology. The same majority believe
that the government's intentions stating that this is only for peaceful
purposes is not their true intention," he said.

Speaking at a gathering of farmers in the Jezreel Valley, Olmert maintained that
Israel would have to make "tough decisions" with regard to territorial
compromise.

According to the Prime Minister, anyone who thinks Israel can continue to hold
onto the provinces captured in the defensive Six Day War of 1967 is "living in a
dream."

"Everyone understands that the state of Israel can't exist without a guarantee
of a Jewish majority," Olmert added.

Although many in Israel believe the question of Jewish majority to be a
fundamental problem, recent research suggests otherwise. A major demographic
study published in 2005 by Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid and Michael L. Wise
revealed that the status of a Jewish majority between the Jordan River and
Mediterranean Sea is much more stable than previously reported, with Jews
representing at least 60 percent of the total population.

The data further suggests that the numbers of Arabs living in Judea and Samaria
(commonly referred to as the West Bank) in particular have been grossly
overstated.

Olmert added in his address that any territorial compromise to giveaway all or
parts of Judea and Samaria would not occur unilaterally?similar to the
withdrawal from Gaza 2005?but rather through a negotiated solution with the
Palestinian Authority.

The statements came on the eve following Olmert's release of 255 terrorists
serving terms in Israeli prisons, back into the general population of Judea and
Samaria, a move which drew the criticism of many throughout the country.

According to the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, there are
over 260,000 tax paying Jewish residents living in the region.

The provinces of Judea and Samaria are also home to many of Judaism's holiest
cities including Hebron, Shechem, Beit El, Beit Lechem, and Shilo. Each of
these cities (and others) play key roles in Jewish History as chronicled by the
Tanach, or Jewish holy books including the Torah, and works of the Prophets.

On Saturday, Olmert stated his intention to run for a second term as chairman of
the Kadima party, despite numerous calls for his resignation, allegations of
criminal activity, and public approval ratings in single digits.

5. Jewish and
Christian Refugees from Arab states should not be Ignored!DEBKAfile reports: Problem of Jews and Christians expelled from
Arab lands must be dealt with in any Middle East peace process ? US
Congressional caucus states
http://www.debka.com/index.php
July 21, 2007, 12:04 PM (GMT+02:00)

Of the million-strong, 2,500-year old Jewish communities of the Middle East,
only 8,000 remain in 10 Arab countries, said former Justice Minister and
Attorney General of Canada Dr. Irwin Cotler in his briefing to the bipartisan
Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington co-headed by Frank R. Wolf
(R.-VA) and Tom Lantos (D-CA), Thursday, July 19. Yet against the 101 UN
resolutions passed on the Palestinian refugees since 1947, not one addressed the
forcible expulsion of Jews from Arab countries by state-orchestrated oppression,
persecutions and pogroms.

This raises serious questions about the appropriateness of the United Nations
having a role in the Middle East Quartet meeting in Lisbon Thursday, said Cotler,
counsel to former prisoners of conscience Andrei Sakharov and Nelson Mandela. he
whole question of refugees and refugee claims is at the forefront of the Peace
Process, and integral to the Roadmap. Rights for Jewish refugees from Arab
countries, 600,000 of whom were absorbed in Israel, have to be part of any peace
process with a claim to integrity.

The Caucus, after hearing four speakers on behalf of the Justice for Jews from
Arab Countries organization, decided to promote two Middle East refugee
resolutions already before Congress. They would instruct the President to ensure
that in all international forums dealing withMiddle East refugees, US
representatives must ensure that reference to Palestinian refugees is matched
with explicit reference to Jewish, Christian and other refugees expelled from
Arab lands.

Stanley Urman, Executive Director of JJAC said, "When the issue of 'refugees' is
raised within the context of the Middle East, people invariably refer to
'Palestinian refugees', virtually never to the plight and flight of Jews,
Christians and other minority populations from Arab countries.

As a matter of law and equity, history records two refugee populations ? not one
- created as a result of the longstanding dispute in the Middle East.

Regina Bublil-Waldman, whose family escaped Libya in 1967, said that forgetting
the nearly one-million Jews who were indigenous to the Middle East and North
Africa means that we have a distorted view of the Middle East Refugee Problem
today.

Prof. Henry Green noted that the Jewish legacy in Arab lands is eight times
older than American Jewry, going back 2,800 years and including periods of
Jewish sovereign statehood in the Babylonian and Roman eras. The campaign to
secure rights and redress for Jews forced to flee Arab countries is not a
campaign against Palestinian refugees but a quest for truth and justice.

It is also a call for other minorities to be recognized and addressed. Today,
Christians are exiting the Middle East in greater numbers than ever before. Jerusalem News-650
10 Ab 5767, 25 July 2007Contents:
1.The USA in Iraq and the Middle East: Expect the Unexpected!
2.China's New Nuke Sub Has US in Sight
3.TishaB'Av:
Hopeful Anticipation Amidst Bitter Mourning
4.Proverbs 9:1-6
5. U.S. Senator: UN Human Rights Council focuses only on Israel

Since April 2007, George W. Bush has had on his desk an exit plan from Iraq,
built around the phased pull-back by early 2008 of a little more than half of
the 170,000 or so troops there at present. Around 50-70,000 soldiers are to be
redeployed to large strategic fortified enclaves in the south and the north as a
semi-permanent US presence. They will be backed by four naval and aerial strike
groups in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and a chain of giant air bases, some
expanded, others built from scratch, in Oman, Qatar and Jordan.

Building up in Persian Gulf waters as a key element of this post-withdrawal
military plan are three American carriers and their strike groups. The USS
Enterprise CVN 65 Big E Strike Group departed for the region Monday, July 8, to
join the USS Stennis and USS Nimitz carriers which are already there.

A clue to the coming American deployment can be seen in the Basra Province of
southern Iraq where British troops have shut themselves away in a well-fortified
compound south of the oil city. It is blasted daily by mortars and other heavy
weapons. From time to time, British commando patrols emerge to hit enemy assault
concentrations.

In short, even after the Americans quit Iraq, the Iraq War will continue ? with
one difference: it will no longer rage in the main cities such as Baghdad, but
in wide open spaces.

It is already apparent that the US army?s main enemy, certainly in the initial
phase after withdrawal, will be al Qaeda, as it is today.

From the end of 2005, Iraq watchers realized there was no way of preventing Iraq
fragmenting into sectarian or ethnic segments: an independent Kurdish state in
the north and one, or even two, independent Shiite entities south of Baghdad.

The Americans campaign today focuses mainly on rooting the jihadist terrorists
out of Baghdad, Baqouba, Ramadi and Falluja in order to determine the identity
and character of the third segment, an independent Sunni Muslim enclave in
central Iraq.

This task cannot be finished within the timeframe dictated by political
realities in America. There is no way therefore of saying for certain which
Sunnis will rule that part of the country - indigenous Iraqi Arabs or al Qaeda,
or even, by remote control through a surge of cash, Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the
outcome of the current US-al Qaeda showdown in Iraq will bear long-term
consequences for American positions in the Persian Gulf, especially in relation
to Iran.

- Israel, Syria and Hizballah have prepared their armies for a war contingency
entailing a possible clash on Golan and the Lebanese-Israeli frontier regions.

- Iran has imposed gasoline rationing on civilian vehicles. An Iranian official
admitted in Tehran two days ago that the country was preparing for an emergency
and stocking up on fuel for the military.

- The American carrier, the USS Enterprise, is on its way to the Middle East
with a powerful strike group.

Two months ago, military high commands in the Middle East stopped asking when
the American army would leave Iraq. They took for granted that a major pull-back
is in the works and not far away. The question exercising most minds these days
is which of the two leading antagonists in the current regional contest will be
first to assemble all the pieces of the war puzzle and gain the advantage over
his rival, the Bush administration in Washington or Ali Khamenei?s mullahs in
Tehran?

3.Tisha B'Av:
Hopeful Anticipation Amidst Bitter Mourning
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123166 by Hillel Fendel
Excerpts Only
(IsraelNN.com) Monday night and Tuesday marks Tisha B'Av, the 9th day of Av,
commemorating many of the worst tragedies that have befallen the Jewish People
over the past 3,300 years. Jews the world over are fasting and praying on this
day for the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple.

Though this day is the saddest in the Jewish calendar, it contains several
hopeful features. It is referred to in the Book of Lamentations (Eicha) as an
"appointed season" (moed, in Hebrew), which generally refers to a festive day -
and in fact, it is expected to be the day on which the Messiah will have been
born. When reading Eicha aloud following the evening prayer service, the
penultimate verse is repeated, with the prayer, "Return us unto You, G-d, and we
will return. Renew our days as of old!"

On the other hand, many calamities occurred on this day. Among them were the
following, in chronological order:
the refusal of the Jewish People to ignore the report of the Twelve Scouts and
agree to go with Moses to the Promised Land. In the wake of this, G-d decreed on
Tisha B'Av 40 years of wandering in the desert instead of an immediate entry
into the Land.
the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples in Jerusalem at the hands
of the Babylonians and Romans, respectively;
the failure of the Bar Kokhba uprising in the second century;
the day on which all of Spanish Jewry was to be expelled from the country in
1492; the beginning of World War I in 1917;
the end of legal Jewish residence in Gush Katif, in 2005, as decreed by the
Ariel Sharon government.

As on every Tisha B'Av since the liberation of the Old City in 1967, myriads of
Jews, this year reaching 100,000, frequented the Western Wall (Kotel) Monday
night and Tuesday, praying for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple just behind it.

4.Proverbs 9:1-6[Proverbs 9:1] WISDOM HATH BUILDED HER HOUSE, SHE HATH HEWN OUT
HER SEVEN PILLARS:
SEVEN PILLARS: Inspired by this verse, T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia")
wrote a book about his wartime adventures called "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom".
Lawrence was the leader of the Arab Resistance to the Turks in World War 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._LawrenceAt that time the Turks ruled over the Arabs and were in league with the
Germans against the Allies. Lawrence was actually pro-Zionist though he
exemplifies an Arabist trend in Britain and the USA.

[Proverbs 9:2] SHE HATH KILLED HER BEASTS; SHE HATH MINGLED HER WINE; SHE HATH
ALSO FURNISHED HER TABLE.

[Proverbs 9:3] SHE HATH SENT FORTH HER MAIDENS: SHE CRIETH UPON THE HIGHEST
PLACES OF THE CITY,

[Proverbs 9:4] WHOSO IS SIMPLE, LET HIM TURN IN HITHER: AS FOR HIM THAT WANTETH
UNDERSTANDING, SHE SAITH TO HIM,

[Proverbs 9:5] COME, EAT OF MY BREAD, AND DRINK OF THE WINE WHICH I HAVE
MINGLED.
The Right Path is prepared for us. It is actually quite easy to follow. It is
also the best way not only for religious reasons but for reasons of our own
mental and physical well-being.

[Proverbs 9:6] FORSAKE THE FOOLISH, AND LIVE; AND GO IN THE WAY OF
UNDERSTANDING.
The bad way that entails wrong doing is foolish meaning that it is
counter-productive. If we allow ourselves to think clearly about what we really
want in an optimal situation we would always choose the right path. To do
otherwise is to be short-changed. Why should we keep on deluding ourselves?
The Bible has the answer.
The Bible is easy to read but not always easy to understand. Just reading
Scripture however has soothing healing effect and is something we should do
frequently.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0411/is_3_48/ai_64507455/pg_5<<Professor Keogh cites an oral source that attributes the inclusion of the
Jewish Congregations to consultations with Isaac Herzog, then Chief Rabbi of
Ireland, who became Chief Rabbi of Palestine in 1937, the father of Chaim Herzog
(who contributes a preface to Keogh's book). Rabbi Herzog and de Valera were
friends, so much so that the future Taoiseach had on occasion hidden in the
Rabbi's house when a fugitive from British or Free State police. Both were eager
to see the establishment of an independent Irish republic.

<<The Herzog-de Valera friendship continued until the Rabbi's death, but did not
translate into practical measures to assist German Jews before the War, nor the
many Jewish victims of Nazi cruelty later. Just before war broke out, de Valera
declined to meet Herzog's request that he admit Christian Jewish doctors and
dentists to Ireland and allow them to practice there; he also refused a request
from the Vatican to admit a number of Jewish doctors temporarily. In the entire
period of Nazi persecution, only 60 to 7O Jews were admitted to Ireland as
refugees.

[Brit-Am Comment: this source says "60 to 7O Jews were admitted to Ireland as
refugees".
The real figure seems to be close to 6 or 7 or less!]

<<As late as 1953, the Department of Justice trotted out Bewley's old arguments
against Jewish immigration. The same Department, however, was eager to admit the
Belgian Fascist leader Leon Degrelle in 1946, after the Belgians had condemned
him to death as a war criminal, and several fugitive members of Pavlevic's
brutal Croatian government seem to have entered postwar Ireland with ease and
remained there.

(1. The US has designated the Israeli-made Arrow anti-missile missile system and
its Green Pine radar the first line in its defensive shield against Iranian
ballistic missiles. Any incoming missile would have to first outmaneuver the
Israeli system located in the Negev before reaching the Europe-based links ? 10
interceptors, which Washington plans for Poland and a radar station projected
for the Czech Republic - and possibly Georgia too.

The American and Israeli anti-missile deployments are to be integrated to create
an inter-operational multilayered air defense system by 2013.

To make this happen, Washington will sink another $1 billion in the Israeli
technology on top of the $2.8 billion already invested.

(2. The US-Israeli missile defense network is designed not only to intercept
Iranian ballistic missiles of 1,300-1,500 km range fired at Europe, but also the
short-range Iskander-E short-range ballistic missiles.

(3. The United States and Israel therefore have more in mind than a defense
system against an Iranian ballistic threat to Europe. They do not rule out
Moscow?s potential for one day creating the same kind of integrated missile and
missile defense system with Iran and or Syria, as the one the US has formed with
Israel.

In reports first published by DEBKAfile, American naval and air forces
intercepted two North Korean vessels clandestinely en route for Iran with
cargoes of enriched uranium and nuclear equipment in the past month. The
shutdown of Pongyong's nuclear facilities has made these items surplus to North
Korea's requirements and the Islamic Republic was more than willing to pay a
hefty price for the goods.

On July 12, the second intercepted North Korean freighter was sunk in the
Arabian Sea by torpedoes fired from a US submarine 100 miles southeast of the
Iranian naval base-port of Chah Bahar. Delivery of its freight of enriched
weapons-grade uranium and equipment and engines for manufacturing more fissile
material including plutonium in its hold could have jump-forwarded Iran's
nuclear bomb and warhead project, lopping off at least a year of work. For this
Iran's rulers were ready to reportedly pay out a cool $500 million.

US airplanes had been tracking the freighter and picked up signs of
radioactivity, indicating the presence of nuclear materials aboard.

President Bush had the option of ordering US Marines to board the vessel or to
sink it. He decided on the latter - both because the North Korean freighter was
approaching an area patrolled by Iranian naval units and seizure of the vessel
by American marines might have provoked a clash; secondly, it was the better
choice in order to avoid exposing US troops to radioactive contamination.
American naval and air units in the Persian Gulf, Middle East and seas opposite
North Korea were ordered to go on a high state of readiness and the torpedo the
North Korean vessel was accomplished without delay.

After the attack, US warships raced to the spot where the ship went down where
they picked up three lifeboats. Most of the North Korean sailors aboard were
either injured or dead. Twenty in all died in the attack. They all bore symptoms
of contamination. After the episode, the area was cordoned off and underwater
equipment dropped to salvage the cargo from the sunken ship.

All the parties to the incident, the United States, North Korea and Iran, have
kept the incident under wraps as the situation in and around the Gulf is
inflammable enough to explode into a full-blown Iranian-US clash at the
slightest provocation.

There was also the danger that North Korea might decide at the last moment to
abort the closure of its nuclear facilities.

2. Brit-Am Version
of Explorator
10.14From: david meadows <rogueclassicist@gmail.com>
================================================================
explorator 10.14 July 29, 2007
================================================================
================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================
A 3500 b.p. Egyptian fortress in the Sinai:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/books/review/Lilla-t.html
================================================================
ASIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC
================================================================

This in from Y-Net News: Same base story, just change the names ... and
would really be funny if ...

FYI to those interested: Sudanese refugees who are seeking safety here
(Israel), while circumstances could and should be much better than they
are, the refugees are at a boarding school being taken care of for at
least the next ten days in Sderot (where the kassam rockets are being
laubed daily). Yours truly is on the volunteer list to help.

Sudan's defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused "24
Jewish organizations" of "fueling the conflict in Darfur" last week in an
interview with a Saudi newspaper.

Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi
kingdom last week.

"The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are
making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust
in their campaigning," the Sudanese defense minister replied.

Hussein added that the Darfur conflict was driven by "friction between
farmers and herders and shepherds. Among the biggest problems is that of
water, which is used to exploit the differences and fuel the conflict."

"Yes, they provide political and material support through their control
over the media and across American and British circles," Hussein said,
adding that Jewish groups were using "all means to fuel these conflicts."

He added that Western reports of 200,000 people dying in Sudan were false,
and said: "We talk about 9,000 dead as a result of either government or
rebel actions."

'We came to Israel to look for a better place'
Several days ago, Sudan's Interior Minister, Zubair Bashir Taha, lashed
out at Sudanese refuees who had sought asylum in Israel, and accused
"Isaeli authorities of encouraging the Sudanese refugees to come to their
country."

He added that his ministry was "very confused" by Sudanese citizens who
came to Israel."

The Sudan Tribune quoted a Sudanese refugee as telling al-Jazeera
television: "We were surprised when we came here. We met good people, who
welcomed us and gave us food. We feel that we are extremely happy. We hope
that the Israeli government would find a solution for us and our children.
We came here to look for a better place."

Meanwhile, in the US, a number of Jewish organizations have attempted to
raise awareness over the plight of Sudanese citizens who face mass
killings and ethnic cleansing from the Sudanese government. Some 20 Jewish
organizations joined the 'Save Darfur Coalition,' along with other
religious communities and American civil rights groups.

11:52 NATO would agree to send forces to Judea and Samaria, after Israel's
withdrawal from the area. In an interview with the Saudi newspaper Al Watan, a
European diplomat in Brussels said that NATO would prefer that its soldiers are
integrated in an international force but would be prepared to carry out a
mission alone if necessary. NATO was reacting to the proposal made by vice prime
minister Haim Ramon for a deployment of NATO troops in the region. (Guysen.International.News)

04:11 Poland is holding an enquiry into members of the former Communist party
who played an important role in the rise of anti-Semitism in Poland at the end
of the sixties. Officials from the Nations Memory Institute have affirmed that
they are in possession of documents proving public appeals to hatred made
against Jews in the city of Lodz in 1968 and 1969 by leaders of the Communist
party. (Guysen.International.News)

03:52 The United States has promised military aid of $30.4 billion over ten
years to Israel. This aid is intended to ease Israel's concern after the
agreement made between American and Saudi Arabia, for sophisticated weapons
systems for $20 billion. (Guysen.International.News)

02:13 The town of Cottbus, Germany, has decided to hold a general strike in
reaction to the Neo Nazi march that is set to take place there. (Guysen.International.News)

01:56 An American soldier has been killed and thirteen injured in clashes with
the Taliban in the east of Afghanistan. (Guysen.International.News)

Extrracts:
GORDON Brown arrived at Camp David last night for his first meeting as Prime
Minister with George Bush - stressing the two countries' "shared destiny".

Mr Brown has praised the US for its role in fighting terrorism and vowed that
British links would be "strengthened", rather than weakened, in an effort to
dispel American fears that he would be more hostile to the Washington
administration than his predecessor, Tony Blair.

He was due to have a private dinner last night with Mr Bush at Camp David, the
US president's Maryland retreat, to discuss issues such as Iraq, Darfur and
world trade, before going to Washington today for cross-party talks with Senate
leaders and Congress.

Speaking en route to Camp David, he said: "I have always been an Atlanticist and
a great admirer of the American spirit of enterprise and national purpose and
commitment to opportunity for all.

"I have visited America many times and have many friends there. And as Prime
Minister, I want to do more to strengthen our relationship with the US.

"It is firmly in the British national interest that we have a strong
relationship with the US, our single most important bilateral relationship."

Last night, Mr Brown stressed that he was travelling to the US so shortly after
becoming Prime Minister "to affirm the historic partnership of shared purpose
that unites our two countries".

"For this is a partnership that is rooted in something far more fundamental and
lasting than common interests or even a common history. It is our shared ideals
that for two centuries have linked the destinies of our two countries together."

Mr Brown quoted Winston Churchill - the first British PM to visit Camp David -
who emphasised the "joint inheritance of values" that started with the idea of
British liberty and found its way into the American Declaration of Independence.

Stressing once again his staunch support for Mr Bush, Mr Brown praised the
United States' resilience and bravery following the attacks of 11 September,
2001.

"We should acknowledge the debt the world owes to the United States for its
leadership in this fight against international terrorism," he said.

22:57 A new American strategy in the Middle East? The United States announced
on Monday a vast program of military aid to the Middle East of $13 billion
dollars for Egypt, $30 billion dollars for Israel and contracts with Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf countries worth at least $20 billion, according to the
American press. (Guysen.International.News)
19:08 At the end of 2006, 186,000 foreigner workers were counted in Israel, of
whom 84,000 are in the country illegally. This is a 5% increase from 2005. 28%
come from Thailand, 20% from the Philippines, and 10% from China. (Guysen.International.News)
17:18 American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, officially confirmed on
Monday the agreement for military assistance to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
the United Arab Emirates. (Guysen.International.News)
04:28 Benyamin Netanyahu will put the issue of education at the heart of his
campaign for the Knesset elections. His campaign slogan will be "A good teacher
in every class". The head of the Likud who has a good security image wants to
propose a more social program in order to make his time as Finance Minister
forgotten. Many poor citizens still have trouble forgiving for him. (Guysen.International.News)
02:57 On a visit to Saudi Arabia, the Sudanese Defense Minister has said that
the conflict in Darfur was the fault of the Jews. "24 Jewish organizations are
maintaining the conflict in Darfur", he said in a Saudi newspaper. (Guysen.International.News)

(IsraelNN.com) 45 Israeli-Arab families from the Galilee submitted a request to
the National Insurance Institute (NII) on Monday asking to be recognized as
victims of terrorism. The families were all involved in a bus crash in the Sinai
Peninsula last year in which 11 people were killed and dozens were wounded. The
families claim that their bus driver deliberately crashed in an act of
anti-Israeli terrorism.

In their request, the families said that as the driver took them towards Israel
on August 22, 2006, he began harshly criticizing them for being Israeli citizens
and for cooperating with Jews.
The driver called them "trash of the Jews," they said, and warned that the ride
would be their final journey. Survivors claimed to have seen a vehicle waiting
near the scene of the crash spirit the hostile driver away immediately
thereafter.

An Egyptian court later sentenced the bus driver to one year in prison. In
reaction to the news of the sentencing, in September 2006, families of those
killed in the crash held a spirited demonstration outside the Egyptian embassy
in Tel Aviv. Demonstrators called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the
people of Egypt "cowards," and characterized the government there as
"terrorist." One bereaved mother told the press that the Egyptians should "learn
from Israel about human rights."

The Israeli-Arab tourists from Nazareth were traveling in one of four buses in a
convoy on a tour organized by a Galilee group. The buses were returning to
Israel from a trip to the Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh at the time of
the crash. Their driver and two tour guides were Egyptian citizens.

Many of the crash victims have argued for months that the crash was a planned
act of terrorism. They are now pressing the NII in order to receive compensation
as victims of terrorism. In 2006, the NII paid a total of NIS 360 million to
terror victims and their families.

Director of Almagor Terror Victims Association Meir Indor noted that only the
General Security Services (Shabak) and Israeli police can investigate and
determine if this incident was a terrorist attack. Indor charged that
otherwise, it could be that a few lawyers who want to cash in on Israel's public
coffers started this initiative and are basing it on the claim that the bus
driver shouted at the bus passengers. "If a speeding bus driver who shouted at
his passengers has a wreck, does that make this a terror attack and obligate the
Israeli tax payers to pay for the damages," asked Indor.

At the time of the incident, Egyptian authorities refused to allow Israeli first
responders into the Sinai to provide assistance. The Egyptians behaved similarly
in April 2006, after three explosions ripped through the Red Sea resort town of
Dahab, in a massive terror attack by Al-Qaeda linked terrorists. 24 people were
killed in that attack and dozens were injured. In October 2004, at least 33
people, 13 of them Israelis, were killed and well over 100 were wounded in three
attacks on two Red Sea holiday resorts packed with Israeli tourists.

[Extracts]
JERUSALEM ? Security forces acting on orders from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
yesterday destroyed a synagogue used by Jews to worship near Joseph's Tomb,
Judaism's third holiest site and the believed burial place of the biblical
patriarch Joseph ? the son of Jacob who was sold by his brothers into slavery
and later became the viceroy of Egypt.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, which granted nearby strategic territory to the
Palestinians, Joseph's Tomb was supposed to be accessible to Jews and
Christians. But following repeated attacks against Jewish worshippers at the
holy site by gunmen associated with then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat's militias,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak in October 2000 ordered an Israeli unilateral retreat
from the area.

The tomb is located near the modern day West Bank city of Nablus, or biblical
Shechem.

Currently, Jewish pilgrimage to Joseph's Tomb is legal only several times per
year in convoys protected by the Israel Defense Forces. Still, some Jews
regularly attempt clandestine visits to the holy site.

Jewish students last year built a structure on the West Bank's Mount Gerizim,
which is just outside the tomb area. The structure was used as a synagogue and
was constructed on the Mount so Jews can pray and study Torah as close to the
tomb site as possible. Dozens of Jewish students congregated daily at the
makeshift synagogue.

But Olmert's office and Israeli government officials deemed the structure ?
which they refused to call a synagogue ? illegal since it was built without a
government permit.

Building at Joseph's Tomb site after Palestinian Authority took control in 2000
.

Just before the synagogue was bulldozed, one Jewish student told the Israel
National News website, "If the synagogue is destroyed, it will be rebuilt."

Olmert's decision to single out for demolition the synagogue near Judaism's
third holiest site has been called into question by religious leaders here.

While Jewish construction projects deemed illegal in Jewish cities in the West
Bank is regularly bulldozed by the government, Olmert's office has taken no
action against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in illegal outposts
in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

WND previously exposed the Israeli government has allowed Palestinians and the
United Nations to build illegally on hundreds of acres of Jewish-owned lands in
Jerusalem purchased by the Jewish National Fund, a U.S.-based Jewish
organization, using Jewish donors funds solicited for the purpose of Jewish
settlement. Tens of thousands of Palestinians live on the Jewish-owned Jerusalem
land, which was recently isolated from Jewish sections of Jerusalem by Israel's
security barrier.

Yeshiva at third holiest site turned into mosque

The Torah describes how Jacob purchased a land plot in Shechem, which was given
as inheritance to his sons and was used to re-inter Joseph, whose bones were
taken out of Egypt during the Jewish exodus. Joseph's sons, Ephraim and
Manasseh, are also said to be buried at the site.

As detailed in the Torah, shortly before his death, Joseph asked the Israelites
to vow they would resettle his bones in the land of Canaan ? biblical Israel.
That oath was fulfilled when, according to the Torah, Joseph's remains were
taken by the Jews from Egypt and reburied at the plot of land Jacob had earlier
purchased in Shechem, believed to be the site of the tomb. Modern archeologists
confirm Nablus is the biblical city of Shechem

Yehuda Leibman, who until the Israeli retreat from Joseph's Tomb in 2000 was
director of a yeshiva constructed there, explained, "The sages tell us that
there are three places which the world cannot claim were stolen by the Jewish
people: the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Patriarchs and Joseph's Tomb."

There is evidence suggesting for more than 1,000 years Jews of various origins
worshipped at Joseph's Tomb. The Samaritans, a local tribe that follow a
religion based on the Torah, say they trace their lineage back to Joseph himself
and that they worshipped at the tomb site for more than 1,700 years.

Israel first gained control of Nablus and the neighboring site of Joseph's Tomb
in the 1967 Six-Day War. The Oslo Accords signed by Arafat and Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin called for the area surrounding the tomb site to be placed under
Palestinian jurisdiction but allowed for continued Jewish visits to the site and
the construction of an Israeli military outpost at the tomb to ensure secure
Jewish access.

Following the transfer of control of Nablus and the general area encompassing
the tomb to the Palestinians in the early 1990s, there were a series of
outbreaks of violence in which Arab rioters and gunmen from Arafat's Fatah
militias shot at Jewish worshipers and the tomb's military outpost.

Six Israeli soldiers were killed and many others, including yeshiva students,
were wounded in September 1996 when Palestinian rioters and Fatah gunmen
attempted to over take the tomb. Eventually, Israeli soldiers regained control
of the site.

The Palestinians continued to attack Joseph's Tomb with regular shootings and
the lobbing of firebombs and Molotov cocktails.

In early 2000, the Israeli army began denying Jewish visits to the tomb on
certain days due to prospects of Arab violence.

Following U.S. mediated peace talks at Camp David in September 2000, Arafat
returned to the West Bank and initiated his intifada.

During one bloody week in October 2000, Fatah gunmen attacked the tomb
repeatedly, killing two and injuring dozens, prompting Barak to order a complete
evacuation of Judaism's third holiest site on Oct. 6.

Gravestone at traditional burial site for biblical patriarch Joseph after it was
ransacked by Palestinian mobs.

Within less than an hour of the Israeli retreat, Palestinian rioters overtook
Joseph's Tomb and reportedly began to ransack the site. Palestinian mobs
reportedly tore apart books, destroying prayer stands and grinding out stone
carvings in the Tomb's interior.

Palestinians hoisted a Muslim flag over the tomb. Amin Maqbul, an official from
Arafat's office, visited the tomb to deliver a speech declaring, "Today was the
first step to liberate (Jerusalem)."

One BBC reporter described the scene: "The site was reduced to smoldering rubble
? festooned with Palestinian and Islamic flags ? cheering Arab crowd. ?"

Palestinians on Oct. 10 began construction of a mosque on the rubble of the
tomb's adjacent yeshiva compound. Workers painted the dome of the compound
green, the Islamic color.

In a WND exclusive interview, Tariq Tarawi, a Fatah lawmaker who in 2000 served
as chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group in the vicinity of the
tomb, said the Palestinians would "never" allow Israel to rebuild a yeshiva or
synagogue at Joseph's Tomb. The Brigades carried out most of the attacks against
the tomb site.

"A yeshiva is an institution," said Tarawi. "An institution can be the beginning
of claiming rights and these claims can bring once again the Israeli army to
establish a base in the place, and we can not accept this. If the Jews try to
build a yeshiva, we will shoot at them."

Joseph is buried in the Schechem area.
It may be doubted whether or not the present "tomb" is really that of Joseph.
Nevertheless the principle remains.
Joseph is buried in the area.
The synagogue was devoted to Joseph.
A synagogue should not be destroyed anywhere especially not in the Land of
Israel.
The whole land belongs to Israel of whom the Jews are the recognized portion
and forerunners for all the other tribes.
The Arabs DO NOT BELONG THERE and should leave.
See our articles on this subject.Movement of Arab Populations (MAP)
http://www.britam.org/Questions/QuesMAP.html

With Raoul Wallenberg's 95th birthday due on Saturday, one man is still leading
a search for the missing Swedish diplomat and recipient of Yad Vashem's
"Righteous Among the Nations" award for saving Jews.

Max Grunberg is a founding member of the Raoul Wallenberg Honorary Citizen
Committee, based in Ra'anana. Grunberg has pressed efforts toward "immediately
clarifying the fate of Raoul Wallenberg" in recent letters to Swedish Prime
Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon.

Grunberg demands that the EU, whose rotating presidency Germany held at the time
he wrote the letters, implement a 1990 resolution calling on Russia to open
archives to historians and work with the press to "launch a search... [in] the
case of Mr. Raoul Wallenberg."

Of Wallenberg's birthday, Grunberg said, "I share the pain the family is going
through, not having their loved one with them."

A Yad Vashem official said, "Of course it's important to find out if he is still
alive. Raoul Wallenberg symbolizes man's humanity, the essence of the idea that
man has the freedom to choose good in the face of evil and not to remain
indifferent. Unfortunately, his whereabouts remains unknown and so the Jewish
people still wait for the chance to personally express their gratitude due to
this courageous man."

Wallenberg saved "tens of thousands" of lives of Hungarian Jews by issuing them
with protective Swedish passports from his country's embassy in Budapest and by
personally challenging Hungarian and German officials like Adolf Eichmann,
according to Yad Vashem.

Wallenberg is the world's only person with three honorary citizenships -
American, Canadian and Israeli - according to Grunberg.

Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviets in January, 1945. Under diplomatic
pressure in 1957, the Soviet authorities claimed he had died of a heart attack a
decade earlier in Moscow's Lubyanka Prison, but this assertion remains widely
doubted.

================================================================
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME (AND CLASSICS)
================================================================
A colossal statue of Hadrian has been found at Sagalassos:

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
A Bronze Age skeleton/burial from near Peterborough:

================================================================
NORTH AMERICA
================================================================
An update of sorts on that ongoing dig at Beaubassin (Nova
Scotia):

I shared the info about "US Presidents and Jewish Firsts" that was on the
Ephraimite Forum to a friend of mine.
http://britam.org/Ephraimite/EphraimiteForumLatest.html#10Presidents
She pointed out that although George W.
Bush might not have set any "firsts," the statement made about him presents a
very negative picture (worthy of the spin master). See her pithy comment below
regarding President Bush. I agree with her wholeheartedly:

"GWB may not have added any Jews to those currently in the gvmt (I don't even
know if that is accurate), but he certainly has attended Jewish events and
incorporated Judaism into White House ceremonies. (He has celebrated both
Passover and Hanukkah while in office.) The omission of that fact was glaringly
obvious. It just goes to prove, half a truth is still half a lie, and lashon
hara (evil tongue/gossip/character assassination) in the case of GWB. He's no
angel, mind you, but he's not the demon some portray."

And here is an interesting note she passed on regarding Richard Nixon:

"Richard M. Nixon, when entreated by Golda Meir, sent arms to Israel that
ultimately helped Israel win the Yom Kippur War in 1973. He had been told by
his Quaker mother almost half a century previously that when it came time to do
good to Israel to not let the chance pass him by. He remembered that maternal
advice during Golda's 3 am phone call pleading for aid and came through
valiantly."

After appointing Joshua Bolten to be the White House chief of staff, US
President George W. Bush nominated another Jewish staffer, Joel Kaplan, to serve
as Bolten's deputy, putting him in charge of the daily policy planning.

The fact that White House policy is now in the hands of two Jews is not seen as
significant by activists in the American Jewish community.

"He is simply appointing the best people for the job," said Nathan Diament, who
heads the Washington office of the Orthodox Union. Another Jewish activist added
that he "wouldn't read too much into it."

Bolten, who first served as head of the Office of Management and Budget, was the
first Jewish member of Bush's cabinet. Ever since Bush took office, there has
been a custom of opening cabinet meetings with a brief prayer and so, before his
first cabinet meeting, Bolten's assistant contacted Diament and asked for help
in finding a Jewish prayer for the security and well-being of the cabinet
members. The Orthodox Union provided him with the text in English and in Hebrew
and Bolten read it aloud at the next cabinet meeting.

Bolten and Kaplan will probably be the most prominent Jewish members of the Bush
administration, but not the only ones. Apart from Bolten, there is another
Jewish cabinet member, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and there
are other Jewish senior staff members, including Deputy National Security
Adviser Elliott Abrams and White House staffer Jay Lefkowitz.

In the past year, several Jews who were holding senior posts in the
administration have left, among them deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz,
undersecretary of defense Doug Feith, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of
staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby and political adviser Ken Mehlman, who now heads the
Republican National Committee.

Yet the policy of the administration has little to do with the religious beliefs
of the staffers. "The president sets the policy goals and it is now the job of
Josh [Bolten] and Joel [Kaplan] to help achieve these goals," said Noam Neusner,
who served as the liaison to the Jewish community in Bush's White House from
2002-2005.

Other Jewish activists, both Republican and Democrat, agree that the nomination
of Bolten and Kaplan have no affect on policy.

For Republicans, there is still a feeling that Bush does not receive the credit
he deserves from the Jewish community. "We have Israel's best friend and it
still hasn't changed the way the Jewish community sees him," said Fred Zeidman,
a close friend of Bush and chairman of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington. "I keep hoping that one day our community will see the light and
support President Bush."

Neusner recalled that in the Bush White House there was always great respect for
religious practices of the staffers and predicted that this policy would remain
now that Bolten is running its daily operations.

One tradition likely to go on is the reading of the Purim megilla led by Chabad
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, which attracts many of the Jewish staffers.

The relatively small number of Jews in Bush's cabinet became an issue largely
due to the comparison with his predecessor, Bill Clinton. The former
administration had such Jewish cabinet members as Robert Reich, Robert Rubin,
Sandy Berger, Lawrence Summers and Madeline Albright and State Department
officials Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk and Aaron Miller.

"I don't support this idea of bean counting," said Jay Footlik, who was
Clinton's liaison to the Jewish community. He sees the fact that the former
administration had many Jewish members as significant to the policy the
president had in regard to the Jewish community. According to him, the reason
Jews were so visible in Clinton's administration was merely a result of the
community being "drawn to public involvement and political activity."

Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico at Mayag?z 00681-9012, USA.

To estimate the maternal contribution of Native Americans to the human gene pool
of Puerto Ricans--a population of mixed African, European, and Amerindian
ancestry--the mtDNAs of two sample sets were screened for restriction fragment
length polymorphisms (RFLPs) defining the four major Native American haplogroups.
The sample set collected from people who claimed to have a maternal ancestor
with Native American physiognomic traits had a statistically significant higher
frequency of Native American mtDNAs (69.6%) than did the unbiased sample set
(52.6%). This higher frequency suggests that, despite the fact that the native
Ta?o culture has been extinct for centuries, the Ta?o contribution to the
current population is considerable and some of the Ta?o physiognomic traits are
still present. Native American haplogroup frequency analysis shows a highly
structured distribution, suggesting that the contribution of Native Americans
foreign to Puerto Rico is minimal. Haplogroups A and C cover 56.0% and 35.6% of
the Native American mtDNAs, respectively. No haplogroup D mtDNAs were found.
Most of the linguistic, biological, and cultural evidence suggests that the
Ceramic culture of the Ta?os originated in or close to the Yanomama territory in
the Amazon. However, the absence of haplogroup A in the Yanomami suggests that
the Yanomami are not the only Ta?o ancestors.

Fatah officials in Ramallah claimed over the weekend that Professor Sana
al-Sayegh, who teaches at Palestine University in Gaza City, was kidnapped
by Hamas militiamen who forced her to convert to Islam against her will.

The officials said the president of the university, Dr. Zaher Khail, had
assisted Hamas in kidnapping the professor.

They added that senior officials in the office of Hamas Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh played a major role in forcing her to convert to Islam.

"She was forced to convert to Islam against her will," the Fatah officials
said. "She was kidnapped and held for two weeks during which time she was
not allowed to contact her family." Sayegh is the dean of the Science and
Technology Faculty at Palestine University. She has represented the
university at numerous conferences around the world over the past few years
and is considered one of the most prominent experts in her field.

According to the Fatah officials, she went missing in late June. When her
family's attempts to find her failed, they sought the help of Haniyeh's
office.

Two weeks later the family was summoned to a meeting with some of Haniyeh's
aides, who were accompanied by the professor.

At the meeting, which was held at the home of Hamas official Rafik Makki,
the family was told that the professor had converted to Islam and married a
Muslim man.

When the professor's stunned mother asked her if this was true, she nodded
her head, murmuring: "Yes, God has guided me through the right path." The
mother later claimed that her daughter made the statement under threats from
Hamas gunmen who were in the room.

The Hamas officials are also reported to have shown the family a document
signed by the professor indicating that she had converted to Islam and
married a man named Izz al-Arab Awur.

But the family claims that the man told them that he never married the
professor.

Several attempts by the family to arrange a meeting with Haniyeh to find out
the truth failed. At one point, said a relative, they found the professor's
car parked outside Haniyeh's office.

"When we told them that we wanted to see her, we were ordered to leave
immediately," he recounted. "We were told that we could take her car and go
away. But we told them that we didn't come to get the car, but Professor
al-Sayegh." Leaders of the tiny Christian minority in Gaza City who
requested a meeting with Haniyeh to solve the problem were also turned down.

Some 3,000 Christians live in the Gaza Strip. Following the Hamas takeover
of the Strip, many of them have expressed their desire to leave.

The board of directors of Palestine University confirmed Sunday that Sayegh
had converted to Islam, but denied that the university was linked to the
case in any way. "We won't allow anyone to exploit our name in political
disputes," it said in a statement, referring to the Hamas-Fatah power
struggle. "The case of Professor al-Sayegh is a personal one and does not
reflect the policy of the university."

Hamas officials strongly denied that they had forced the professor to
convert to Islam and accused Fatah of spreading lies designed to undermine
Hamas's credibility. The officials said that Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar met
with Sayegh, who told him that she had converted out of her own will to
marry her colleague, Awur.

Ala Aklouk, a senior Muslim cleric in Gaza City who was entrusted by the
Haniyeh government to look into the case, said the professor converted to
Islam of her free will. "She was too afraid to inform her family that she
had converted to Islam," he said. "So she asked me and other officials to
inform her family. She also made it clear that she had no intention to
return home unless all her family members converted to Islam." Aklouk
claimed that the professor did not convert because she wanted to marry a
Muslim man, but because she "really believed in Islam." "If you sit with
her, you will feel as if you are sitting with a devout Muslim woman and not
a Christian," he said. "She abandoned a good and easy life for the sake of
Islam. She challenged everyone and did what she was supposed to do - become
a devout Muslim."

Hanan Matar, a female activist working for the Gaza-based Palestinian Center
for Human Rights, said she met with the professor over the weekend and heard
from her that her decision to convert to Islam was not related to her
marriage to a Muslim man. She said the professor was wearing the hijab and
"behaved like any religious Muslim woman would."

3. US Church
Against IsraelFrom: shieldofdavid@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [shieldofdavid] Digest Number 514

New England Methodists Weigh Divestment from Israel - Michael Paulson
The New England Conference of the United Methodist Church is advising
congregations and individuals to divest their holdings from a wide variety of
American corporations doing business with Israel. The action is giving new
energy to the divestment movement, which had lost steam in other mainline
Protestant denominations. In June, after two years of research, a committee
released a list of 20 companies from which it recommends divestment, including
Blockbuster, Boeing, General Electric, Raytheon and Volvo. Blockbuster was
criticized for maintaining video rental kiosks in Israeli settlements.
Leading Jewish organizations argue that divestment is not appropriate because
Israel is unable to work with a Palestinian government that is associated with
terrorism. Among the individuals who are not supporting the action is Bishop
Peter Weaver of the New England Conference. "I believe we ought to be continuing
in conversation with the Israeli leadership, as well as the Palestinian
leadership, and trying to be evenhanded in our call for justice," he said.
(Boston Globe)

For the first time since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia plans to
re-operate the Tartus and Latakia ports in Syria as permanent bases for the
Russian Navy in the Mediterranean basin, according to recent western media
reports.

Rumors on the growing Russian activity in the Mediterranean began spreading
following a statement by Russian Navy commander, Admiral Vladimir Masorin,
as he visited the Russian Navy base in the Sebastopol port in Ukraine.

"Being present in the Mediterranean is very important for our Navy in the
Black Sea," the admiral said.

The Qatar-based television network al-Jazeera quoted a senior Russian
Defense Ministry official over the weekend, who declared that Russia must be
permanently present in the Mediterranean again.

According to the reports, Syria plans to let Russia use its ports as part of
the large arms deal signed between the two countries in the past year.

The breakthrough which led to the arms deal was made possible after the two
parties resolved their financial differences.

Over the years, Syria had accumulated a huge debt of approximately $11
billion to Russia. The Russians recently conceded more than 70% of the debt.
The remaining debt will be returned by Syria partly in cash and partly
through permanent port services to the Russian Navy ships in Latkia and
Tartus.

Israeli security officials estimated that the renewed Russian activity in
these bases, which were active throughout the Cold War, was related to the
renewed tensions between Russia and the United States, mainly in light of
the American plan to station antimissile missile systems in Europe - a plan
Moscow views as a threat to its security.

"The bases will allow Russia to protect its interests in the region," the
sources estimated.

While US naval forces are permanently present in the Mediterranean, Russian
Navy ships have so far settled for exercises and friendly visits to
different countries in the region.

Since the Soviet Union's disintegration the Russian Navy has been
experiencing a crisis, but in the past two years efforts have been made to
rehabilitate the warships and the submarines.

The Russian Navy is known to massively operate spy ships.

Israeli officials estimated on Sunday that a renewed base in Syria will help
the Russians carry out spy missions also against Israel, particularly
electronic spying aimed at observing new weapon systems and the flow of
information in channels used by the army and the defense establishment.

5. Pro-western ex-patriate
Syrian visits IsraelI imagine you might be already aware of this, but just in case,
this is the address:

A public debate has been underway in Egypt over the regime's treatment of
the country's Christians. This debate emerged following lawsuits by
Christians who had converted to Islam and then reconverted to Christianity,
and who were now demanding that the Egyptian Interior Ministry issue them
new official documents in their original names and with "Christian" in the
"religion" entry field.

In April 2007, the Egyptian administrative court rejected an appeal by
Christians who had converted to Islam and then reverted to Christianity, and
also accused them of apostasy against Islam - the punishment for which is
death, according to the common interpretation.

(1. 'MEDAL OF
VALOR' TO BE AWARDED TO FALLEN MAJ. RO'I KLEIN
by Ezra HaLevi
The IDF's highest honor, the Medal of Valor, is to be granted to Maj. Ro?i
Klein, who was killed after jumping on a Hizbullah grenade to save his troops
during the Second Lebanon War. The IDF plans to award 142 citations of bravery
to IDF soldiers, officers and the families of those who fell in the Second
Lebanon War.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi authorized the final list of soldiers
and will be awarding 34 of the citations personally. The special citations
include six Medals of Courage, 12 Medals for Distinguished Service and 20 Chief
of Staff Citations. Four citations will be given to the families of soldiers who
fell in battle.
The IDF had waited to grant the citations until all inquiries into the military
aspects of the war had been completed.
?In the fighting, we saw the brotherhood of the fighters in many instances,? COS
Ashkenazi said. ?Everything connected to the rescue and evacuation of the
wounded is deserving of note. These events will be spoken of in the future as
well.?
The awards will be distributed in a ceremony on September 2.
Maj. Ro?i Klein Awarded Medal of Valor
Being granted the supreme Medal of Valor is Ro?i Klein. Maj. Klein, who
volunteered to lead his Golani Brigade Battalion 51 into battle, was killed in
the line of duty on July 26, 2006.
While fighting for control of the hostile village of Bint Jbeil in southern
Lebanon, Klein and his men were ambushed by Hizbullah terrorists. Maj. Klein led
a group of soldiers and tried to attack the terrorists from behind, but were
obstructed by a wall. Klein then began treating one of the wounded, at which
point a terrorist hurled a grenade at the group. Soldiers who survived the
battle - eight did not - reported that Ro'i yelled out "Shma Yisrael?" and
jumped upon the grenade, absorbing the brunt of the explosion and saving the men
around him. A stunned silence overtook the men, and then one of them started
shouting, "He jumped on the grenade! He jumped on the grenade!" Though mortally
wounded, Klein tried to continue to communicate by radio to his superiors.
One of his fellow soldiers, Elad Ozeri, later said that shortly afterwards, when
it was thought that Ro?i was dead, Capt. Itamar Katz, who took over the command,
approached him. At that point, Klein - in his last act on earth - raised his
arm and gave his coded radio device to Katz. "Maj. Klein always emphasized to
us the importance of finding the coded devices of soldiers who were hurt," Ozeri
said, "so that they would not fall into the hands of the enemy."
Klein actually saved his men twice in the same battle, Ozeri said: "At the
beginning of the encounter, he saw a grenade that had been thrown, and was able
to yell and warn the men in time."
The husband and father of two small boys and resident of the hilltop community
of Harisha, Klein was an acknowledged Torah scholar, superb commander and an
accomplished musician in civilian life. He was buried in Eli, the Samaria
community in which he grew up, on what would have been his 31st birthday.
The Medal of Valor has been awarded only some 40 times in the history of the
State, and the award to Klein will be the first in 34 years. The last recipient
was Brig.-Gen. (res.) Avigdor Kahalani, who commanded Armored Battalion 77
during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

(4. WEIZMANN
RESEARCHERS IDENTIFY MECHANISM BEHIND SPREAD OF CANCER
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
A team of researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot has
revealed new details about the mechanism by which cancerous cells migrate
through the body. Such migration, called metastasis, is the leading cause of
death among cancer patients. The findings, published recently in the online
journal Nature Cell Biology, focused on metastasis in breast cancer cells.
A team of Israeli and foreign researchers pooled their knowledge and resources
specifically in order to study the phenomenon of cancer cell migration.
The recently published results of this collaboration add significantly to the
understanding of metastasis and may aid, in the future, in the development of
anti-cancer drugs.
The researchers mapped all of the genetic changes that take place in the cancer
cell after it receives a signal from a substance outside the cell that enables
it to detach itself from neighboring cells and the intercellular material. The
substance activates a number of processes in the cancerous cell, including
changes in cell structure, division and differentiation. In their observations,
the scientists discovered that a specific protein increases in the cell during
these processes. That protein acts as a kind of plug, blocking the cell's
ability to anchor on to other cells. This frees it to move, and, if it's a
cancer cell, to metastasize to a new site in the body.
In experiments with genetically engineered cells, Prof. Yarden and his team
showed that blocking production of the protein in question kept cells in their
place, while overproduction of this protein plug increased their migration. The
scientists also carried out tests on tumor samples taken from around 300
patients with inflammatory breast cancer, a rare but swift and deadly form of
the disease. They found a strong correlation between high cell migration and
levels of the "plug" protein. High levels of this protein, in turn, were
associated with cancer metastasis to the lymph nodes - the first station of
migrating cancer cells as they spread to other parts of the body.
According to Prof. Yarden, "The mechanism we identified is clinically important.
It can predict the development of metastasis and possibly how the cancer will
respond to treatment.

(7. ISRAELI MANURE
POWER PLANT COMBATS GREENHOUSE EFFECT
by Ezra HaLevi
A new power plant in the Hefer Valley has begun to produce electricity from
manure and other organic waste.
According to Globes, the power plant will generate 2-2.4 megawatt/hour (MW/h) by
the end of the year. Its initial output is 1.6 MW/h, of which 1.3 MW/h is
delivered to the national grid and 300 KW/h is used to operate the facility
itself.
The Tambour Hefer Ecology plant is located near Hadera. The Hefer Valley
Cooperative Society is accomplishing two goals through the plant. It was ordered
to reduce pollutants generated by the communities? 12,000 dairy cows and is also
using the 600 tons of manure generated daily to produce electricity.
"This is unquestionably an important milestone,? Granite HaCarmel CEO Amiaz
Sagis said. ?This facility fits in with Granite HaCarmel's strategy to invest in
infrastructures and ecology. The company is also investing resources to develop
alternative energy, water treatment, and desalination."
The web site TreeHugger.com took notice of the Israeli project, pointing out an
additional benefit: ?[Also positive] is that methane has a stronger greenhouse
or ?climate forcing? effect than C02. The benefit of capturing methane before it
escapes a farm manure pond, subverting its destiny of dispersing to the
stratosphere, far exceeds the obvious short-term gains of making methane and its
byproducts useful for farmers.?
If successful, the project is due to be replicated in other areas of the country
with high concentrations of dairies and cattle-ranches.

3, Guysen
Israel News -
Wednesday
Extracts:
2007-08-07 , 23 Av 5767
23:37 Pope Benedict XVI was photographed this week with a Polish Priest accused
of making anti-Semitic comments. The Vatican has not commented on these photos,
published in a Polish magazine. (Guysen.International.News)
20:38 American Military presence in Iraq has never been as high. More than
162,000 soldiers are currently deployed in the country. This number is explained
by the transfer of responsibilities that is taking place at the moment between
different units of the army. To recall, since the start of the Iraq war in 2003,
more than 3,680 American soldiers have died in combat. (Guysen.International.News)
19:45 The French government is currently considering putting in place a
biometric control system (fingerprinting system) in the country's airports. This
system which should replace passport control at customs would prevent long
queues for passangers. (Guysen.International.News)
15:24 Syria: according to humanitarian associations, the number of Iraqi
refugees has broken the two million barrier, making them 10% of the Syrian
population and their living conditions are deplorable (Guysen.International.News)
15:16 The Russian government increases the pressure on Tehran: Moscow will not
perform a single fuel delivery to the new Iranian nuclear center (Russian made),
unless some information is given to the international community on its nuclear
activity. (Guysen.International.News)

13:50 The IDF is preparing to enter into the heart of Hamastan, facing 13,000
Hamas soldiers armed with anti-tank missiles and maybe katyushas. This scenario
had been anticipated by the military intelligence services before Israel
withdrew from the Gaza Strip, but the government preferred to take the risk...
(Guysen.International.News)
12:27 According to the Sunday Telegraph, Hezbollah is preparing for a second
round against Israel. The Shiite militia has purchased vast areas of land from
Druze and Christian to the north of the Litani, in order to populate these
regions with pro-Hizbollah Shiite militants and to build defense posts with a
view to another war with Israel. ''Where the mandate of Unifil ends, the massive
armament of Hizbollah starts", the British daily writes. (Guysen.International.News)
06:26 Today in Jerusalem there will be a meeting sponsored by the World Bank
and the Israeli government to discuss the idea of a canal linking the Gulf of
Eilat and the Dead Sea. (Guysen.International.News)
02:08 Germany is going to examine the impact of former Nazi officer, civil
servants of the federal criminal police, in the institutional culture of this
branch of the German police. Some German historians think that this influence
explains the lack of "will" to investigate and arrest members of extreme right
wing movements in Germany. At the end of the war, many SS officers found work in
the German police force, a police force that had killed about 200,000 Jews
during the leadership of Adolf Hitler. (Guysen.International.News)

================================================================
ANCIENT NEAR EAST AND EGYPT
================================================================
Nice overviewish thing on the simmering controversy over that
recent Leviticus fragment find:

================================================================
EUROPE AND THE UK (+ Ireland)
================================================================
A Mesolithic site has been found off the Isle of Wight:

1. William
Rasmussen: Strange Parallels and the Muslim Menace to the USASubject: Shalom from Bill Rasmussen-bridge collapse in Minneapolis

Shalom Yair: I got this e-mail from some Christians who live in Israel. Somehow
I got on their mailing list and I received this e-mail about the bridge collapse
in Minnesota. As I live fairly near to where the bridge collapse occurred, I
found it quite interesting to say the least:

"This bridge was built 40 years ago. In 2006 we had the first Muslim sworn into
Congress. Keith Ellison is from Minnesota and not only this but the bridge that
collapsed is in his district. This area is called the WEST BANK locally. This
area is now about 75% Muslim.

1967- On the same date 8-1-67 Israel officially claimed the WEST BANK and
annexed East Jerusalem.

Keith Ellison makes an announcement that he will be traveling to Israel this mid
August taking 19 US democratic congressmen with him. He will be meeting with
Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Abbas. The discussion is about Israel giving
back the WEST BANK and East Jerusalem. When was this announcement made? 5:30 pm
on Wednesday the day the bridge collapsed. It was posted on the internet by
Associated Press."

The e-mail certainly is food for thought. Like Hurricane Katrina, there is a
distinct possibility that may be a connection between what has happened and is
happening in Israel and some calamities that have occurred in the United
States.

The bridge collapse was close to the University of Minnesota. The two sides of
the river have always been known as the "West Bank" and the "East Bank".
Currently, there is a very large Somali population close to where the bridge
collapsed. It is this burgeoning population that helped to catapult Keith
Ellison into the House of Representatives.

For anyone familiar with the Somalis, they are without a shadow of doubt, the
most fervently fanatical Muslims on the face of the earth. They make
Palestinians, Pakistanis and others from other Islamic countries look like
secularists by comparison. While there are many fine, wonderful and charming
Somalis, there is an element within the community that should send shudders down
the spine of any freedom loving person.

There is a segment that openly advocates turning the United States into Dar Al
Islam. They make no bones over the fact that they support Osama Bin Laden and
the destruction of the World Trade Center. They disseminate false information
about Jews and Israel in their mosques as well as that about Christians. They
speak of the injustices done to Palestinians and decry US involvement in Iraq.

Then there are the taxi drivers at the Minneapolis airport who refuse to take
fares from blind individuals who have seeing eye dogs. Likewise, these same
drivers refuse to take any passengers who have any alcohol within their
luggage. Then there are the fervent Islamic believers who wash their feet and
genitals in the public bathrooms. Several community colleges have designed
special bathing areas specifically for Muslims. Additionally, many schools and
companies have provided separate prayer rooms to accomodate Muslims in their
daily prayers.

The 40 year time span, the same date in August and the synonymous usage of West
Bank should make us consider what is happening in the United States. Could it
be that we are reaping what we have sown by our State Department and some
American Presidents? What other ills are awaiting to befall us because of the
harm we have done to Israel since Israel became a reborn nation in 1948? If
Keith Ellison has his way, I as a Minnesotan can expect to see more carnage here
in Minnesota. Let us pray that HaShem will stop him and those in Israel who
would cede away biblical land given to the Jewish people by HaShem himself.

2. UK Doctors give
in to Muslims
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/16309Daily Express (U.K.), by Tom Fullerton Original Article
DOCTORS and health workers have been banned from eating lunch at their desks -
in case it offends their Muslim colleagues. Health chiefs believe the sight of
food will upset Muslim workers when they are celebrating the religious festival
Ramadan. The lunch trolley is also to be wheeled out of bounds as the 30-day
fast begins next month. But staff and politicians branded the move political
correctness gone mad and warned that it was a step too far.

"Political correctness is the largest single danger to British culture, and
should be actively opposed wherever it is seen. Join the Campaign Against
Political Correctness now at
http://www.capc.co.uk
"

Extract:
To: Brussels Major

The Brussels mayor, the Socialist Freddy Thielemans, has, on 9th of August 2007
sent out a press release in which he has banned a demonstration with a minute of
silence to commemorate the victims of 9/11 on the 11th sept in Brussels. The
reason for the prohibition is that he says he cannot guarantee public safety and
that he won?t disturb the Islamic section of the population in Brussels. By
invoking the lack of public safety, he is precisely highlighting SIOE?s
demonstration title: